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28

5

Friday 13 October 2

felix

No. 1,359 • Friday •
13 October 2006 •
felixonline.co.uk

Rector tops out
new Southside hall
ALEX ANTONOV

Wye student
injured after
drink contest

he student newspaper
of Imperial College

“Breath testing night” leaves one student in hospital after fall
Andy Sykes
Editor-in-Chief
A student was badly injured, and
several others placed in danger, at
a freshers’ event at Imperial College’s Wye campus when a “breathtesting night” got out of hand.
Wye’s outgoing exec organised a
Freshers’ Ball for the new students
at the campus, with one of the
nights being based around breathalysing students who were drinking
in the campus’ bar. When informed
by the exec of their plans, the Union President, John Collins, initially banned the event from taking
place. However, the exec promised
Mr Collins that the breathalyser
would be “used as an educational
tool” to demonstrate the effects of
alcohol on those who are not used
to over-indulging, and to raise
awareness of drink-driving, which
has been a concern in Wye over the
years. The advertising for the event
was amended to reflect this, and
subsequently Mr Collins allowed
the event to go ahead. The staff at
the campus, including the assistant wardens, asked the exec not to
run the event, but this request was
declined.
A case of beer was offered as a
prize for the person who scored the
highest on the breath testing machine. The winner, who has not been
named, scored 2.4 on the meter, indicating a very high blood alcohol
content (BAC). The student, a first
year, was walking home from the
event, when he fell backwards and

cut his head open “quite badly”, according to the assistant warden at
Wye Campus. The students he was
walking with took him to a nearby
hall of residence, where College
Security were called. Security then
called an ambulance and alerted
the campus authorities. At the time
the ambulance arrived, the student
was in a semi-conscious state.
The student was rushed to the
nearby William Harvey Accident &
Emergency department and was
placed in the Clinical Decision Unit
(CDU) where he was monitored
overnight and into the next day.
Another student was found lying
in the main road near the campus,
apparently unaware of his situation. A group of students found him
and took him home, supervised by
College Security, who made sure
that when the student passed out
he was laid on his side in bed, and
that his friends stayed with him.
The event has been heavily criticised by both the Union and College authorities, with one member
of Wye’s campus staff calling it “irresponsible and dangerous”. The
Union President, John Collins, has
initiated disciplinary procedures
against the Wye President and
those responsible for the event,
adding that he was “extremely disappointed” with the conduct of the
organisers. Concerns have also
been raised over the fact that students were still being served in the
bar, despite being clearly drunk.
The disciplinary tribunal is scheduled to take place on 16 October.

There is some doubt over who will
be implicated in any possible disciplinary measures, given that the
Wye campus is unusual in that the
outgoing exec organises the freshers events rather than the incoming exec, as is the case at South
Kensington campus.
The Union’s disciplinary procedures cannot remove a student’s
membership of the Union, and
cannot expel them from the College. The Union Council can, however, remove them from their post
should evidence of negligence be
presented at the tribunal. The most
severe punishment the tribunal
can impart on those reponsible is
to hand the matter over to a College disciplinary committee, which
has the authority to expel a student
from the College. However, this is
unlikely in this case.
Drinking culture in Britain
The drinking culture of this
country has been a concern for
this government, with some
predicting the liberalisation of
drinking hours would result in
a mass increase in street crime.
However, recent studies in the
borough of Westminster have
seen a substantial fall in the
number of “violence against a
person” incidents once drinking hours changed. However, a
European cafe-style culture is
still a long way off.

The Rector, Sir Richard Sykes, buried a sprig of yew in the last
beam of the new Southside building last Thursday as part of
a traditional building rite. The yew is supposed to bring good
fortune to those that use the building in future. Sir Richard
commented on how quickly planning permission was obtained
to demolish the Grade 2 listed building that occupied the site.
The hall, “the best hotel in South Kensington” according to Sir
Richard, will be open to house students at the start next year.

2

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

NEWS

news.felix@imperial.ac.uk

felix 1,359
Friday 13.10.06
So you want to be an
investment banker?
“Investment banking. The mere
name is a synonym for the big
green bucks and your own selfimage at thirty, on your way to the
Wharf or the City in the brand new
Maserati that last month’s bonus
easily covered.”
PAGE 5

athletes enhance their
performance with it, and 300
years ago, it could be used
as grounds for divorce. Only
the oil industry has a greater
volume of worldwide trade.”
PAGE 7

Doing it yourself
“Thanks to the internet
(amongst other things) it is
now easier to find bands, have
them play at a show or put out
a record by them. This way of
taking control away from the
established music business has
been around for ages.”
FEMM, PAGE 4

Imperial’s bright
young things
“After a summer lazing about
watching The Apprentice or
Dragon’s Den you could be
forgiven if you thought starting
a company was simply glorified
self-humiliation. A dynamic new
organisation created by active
student entrepreneurs from within
Imperial wants to change that for
the better.”
PAGE 6

Caffiene addiction
“It’s illegal in parts of Northern
Thailand, hospitals and
universities run on it, endurance

Civil Engineers
explore El Salvador
“In 2001 several large
magnitude earthquakes shook
the small Central American
Republic of El Salvador. The
effects were devastating on
an already struggling country
where civil war had ended less
than two decades earlier.”
PAGE 28

Reading physics
department to close
Andy Sykes
The University of Reading is to
close its physics department by
2010, with this month’s intake of 30
students being its last.
A review of the subject by the University suggested that it was “no
longer viable”, having recruited
just 30 students for 42 places. The
University’s press statement expressed regret at having to make
the decision to close the department, adding that this was brought
about by “the current funding context” for higher education institutions in UK, requiring that the
limited resources of the university
should be focussed on “academic
areas of comparative strength”,
suggesting financial woes are the
reason for the decision.
The Institute of Physics (IOP) has
been very critical of the decision,
with Science Director Peter Main
saying: “The Institute of Physics
deeply regrets the proposed closure
of Reading University’s physics
department.” In an interview with
the Guardian, Mr Main discussed
the impact of the A-level choice
of sixth-formers in determining
which subjects would be funded:
“the future of Britain’s science base
rests on the university choices of
sixth-formers.”
The IoP’s press release warned
that if universities continue to allow physics departments to close,
there would be a shortage of physicists within a few years. The Institute says that since 2001, 30% of
university physics departments
have either closed or merged. The
last department to be closed was at
Newcastle University, in December

2004, which sparked controversy
within the national press.
The head of the department, Professor John Blackman, said that he
had been fielding calls and visits
from unhappy students and parents concerned over the future of
their course. He made clear in a
statement that no current students
would be affected by the closure,
and that any student enrolled in the
course would be given a chance to
complete it.
The decision to close the department will not be taken until the University Council meets in December.
Professor Blackman, commenting
on whether the decision will be confirmed, commented that this would
depend on the reaction to it: “We
will wait to see whether the university feels that the whole thing is
worth a rethink.”
Opposition to the plans has been
strong both on and off campus.
Dave Lewis, President of Reading University Students’ Union
(RUSU), sent an email to the entire
student body, questioning the validity of the university’s decision, saying that the union was “shocked,
appalled and disappointed”. He refers to an earlier statement by the
university, stating that they were
committed to a future for physics at
Reading, made six months ago, and
that the arguments presented then
for keeping the department open
(good student satisfaction, good
financial income, and strategic importance) are still valid today. He
also organised a number of events
and talks, including as speakers
Professor Blackman, the head of
the Student Physics Society, and
representatives from university

management. RUSU has also set
up a blog, physicsatreading.blogspot.com, which keeps students up
to date on developments.
The department has recently received a £5m investment, which
went into refurbishing laboratories,
and the creation of a high-tech ultra-fast laser lab and advanced
microscopy centre. In addition, the
department, in collaboration with
the chemistry department, has
received two out of 40 Research
Council UK Academic Fellowships,
which are “designed to reward institutions with innovative research
strategies”. These two posts were
advertised in the same week as the
closure, and remain on the Reading
Physics website. Many students and
staff are puzzled at the rationale behind the closure when the department appears to be succeeding.
The closure also ignores a recommendation made by the Science
and Technology Select Committee,
a parliamentary committee, that “it
should be mandatory for universities to alert Hefce [High Education
Funding Council for England] to
proposed departmental closures
in Stem subjects not less than 18
months before the changes in provision are due to come into effect”.
In April 2006, Reading University
assured students and staff that
physics was central to its plans,
and abandoned this view “without
consultation” according to RUSU’s
statement.
Physics and chemistry departments around the country have
been under threat for several years,
with admissions falling as undergraduates settle for what are seen
as “easier” degrees.
PHILIPPA STANGER

No, that’s not photoshopped – some students have decided to steal the P from the physics building.

3

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

NEWS

news.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Union website up!

Sabbatical team in disarray?

The new Union website has proved to be worth the rather steep
asking price, comparing favourably with UCLU’s new site

The sabbs at Council; Shama Rahman (DPGS) is second from right

The ICU website (left), and the more expensive UCLU site (right)
The response from students and
club officers has been strongly positive so far, with a number commenting this reporter that the site has
“made our lives easier”. Instead
of having to fill out forms and cash
and track the money they receive
from club members, the online system allows the money to be deposited directly into the clubs’ accounts.
Additionally, the Student Activities
Centre is encouraging students to
use the site to sign up members, as
it reduces the amount of paperwork

their student volunteer staff has to
deal with. However, not enough students are using the site to sign up
yet, though the number is rapidly
increasing as awareness of the new
functionality spreads.
The new University College London Union (UCLU) website reportedly cost around £80,000, or twice
the amount that the Union paid for
the new site, and has been widely
criticised on the UCL campus for
being, as one disgruntled student
put it, “crap”.

IC ranked 9th in the world
Priya Shah
Imperial College is the ninth best
university in the world according
to the latest Times Education Supplement, having soared from thirteenth place in last year’s survey to
become the only newcomer in this
year’s top ten.
Most of the leading universities
have maintained their positions
with Harvard retaining the top
spot above Cambridge and Oxford,
which ranked second and third
place respectively. Indeed, American institutions continue to dominate, filling 11 out of the top 20 slots
as well as being well-represented
throughout the table. However, despite their world-beating private
funding, this year America has
given way to a greater number of
European and Asian universities in
the top 20. Furthermore, the seemingly unbeatable Harvard University has reduced its lead from a
sizable 10% to less than 4% from its
nearest rival.
Imperial’s rector, Sir Richard
Sykes, has commended Imperial’s
high ranking: “this underlines Imperial’s status as an internationally
leading centre of knowledge and
scholarship, and is an excellent position from which to enter our Centenary year. Above all, it’s a tribute
to the world-class staff we are able

to attract, both academic and nonacademic, and I hope all members
of our community will join with me
in celebrating.” Imperial’s recent
decision to split from the University of London and become independent by 2007, its centenary year,
is reinforced by the Times’ results,
given that they far outranked all
other London institutions: LSE finished at seventeenth place, UCL at
25 and Kings College at 46.
Whether or not prospective students choosing universities can rely
on these figures is debatable. The
difficulty of sourcing truly international data and agreeing on a comprehensive framework has meant
that global ranking of universities
still remains a controversial issue.
Yet, in the face of increased globali-

sation, there is a definite need for a
reliable ranking system as universities shape an international identity for themselves. But different
methodologies and criteria have
led to many different lists that have
variable rankings for the same university. In Newsweek, for example,
Imperial was ranked considerably
lower in seventeenth place.
The Times ranking is based on
both qualitative and quantitative
measures including but not limited
to: peer review by academics, the
number of citations per academic
and the ratio of students to academic staff. Encompassing both research and teaching quality, it aims
to give a reliable picture of where
universities stand on an international platform.

The College beat US universities like Princeton to claim 9th place

Tempers are running high in the
sabb team, with tensions reaching
a head on Tuesday, with at least two
members of the team drafting resignation letters.
At Council on Monday evening,
the sabbaticals and the Felix Editor presented their first reports,
detailing their actions over the preceding months to those attending.
The Deputy President (Graduate
Students), Shama Rahman, faced
a number of questions from several
members of Council, including her
fellow sabbaticals.
Questions were put to Ms Rahman during the presentation of her
report about the upcoming Graduate Student Association (GSA) elections. So far the elections are giving
every appearance of becoming a
farce, as the traditional publicity
for the elections has been minimal,
and only one person is standing,
in the role of Communications Officer. Asked if she knew how many
people were standing for positions,
she replied that she did not know to
a somewhat stunned Council and
referred the question to the Union
President, John Collins.
A member of the sabbatical team
raised questions over Ms Rahman’s

performance at Freshers’ Fair
where she was manning the GSA
stall. It is reported by Felix’s sources
that Ms Rahman arrived well after
the fair started, and was seen packing up at around 3pm. This no doubt
antagonised the other sabbaticals,
who were clearly visible on the site
from set-up to tear-down. Mr Lai’s
report to Council also noted that he
had received complaints about the
GSA stall.
Felix has learned that, allegedly,
some sabbaticals drafted their
resignation letters after Council,
though it is not clear whether this
is in protest at what they perceive
as Ms Rahman’s poor performance
in recent weeks, or whether they
feel the team is no longer viable.
The sabbaticals contacted by this
reporter denied that any resignations would be taking place.
In Ms Rahman’s defence, she did
not have a handover, and the current team could not rely on Luis
Hui, the previous DPGS, to provide
training. Some disgruntled hacks
have suggested that perhaps the
other members of the sabb team
should have made more effort to
ensure Ms Rahman understood
her role.

Felix shortlisted five times in
four categories for Guardian
Student Media Awards 2006
New pullout
section:
Exclusive
interview
with Paul
Rusesabagina,
the hero of
Hotel Rwanda

pages 8-9

Bodies…

Busty revision
in the library

pages 6-7

felix

FREE
No 1354
hursday
1 June 2006
he student newspaper
of Imperial College
felixonline.co.uk

Jobs under threat

College security flaws

Future of Biomedical Sciences Division left in the balance

Chris Miles & Vitali Lazurenko

Photo: Vitali Lazurenko

The new Imperial College Union
website (www.imperialcollegeunion.org) has proven to be a great
success over the last month, taking
almost £38,000 in club membership
and event ticket sales. The site has
also won praise within the more
technically inclined members of
the student body for conforming to
modern web standards.
The website cost £40,000 in total
to build, and went live at the start
of this term after extensive testing over the summer vacation. The
Union bought extra capacity for the
site, in order to cope with the rush
that was expected after Freshers’
Fair with students joining and rejoining clubs and societies. So far,
the site has coped admirably with
the almost 27,000 page impressions
per day.
Though the vast majority of payments for club membership went
through without problems, around
ten students found their payment
being declined when the system
was in fact taking payment. This
problem was identified quickly, as
the site is being closely monitored
to ensure it is functioning correctly,
and the money was returned to the
students without them even realising what had occurred.
In addition to the online payment
of club membership, the new site
has become a far more valuable resource for clubs and societies officers than the previous website. Some
club content is currently missing
from the site, though this is mainly
societies that are defunct, or did not
submit information for the Clubs &
Societies A to Z.

Security at the Faculty Building, hub
of College academic management
and workplace of the Rector, has been
exposed as inadequate and ineffective in light of a Felix investigation.
Felix reporters were able to enter
the ‘restricted’ building on two separate occasions and were not challenged over their identity, whether
they were in fact members of
College or their purpose for entering
Imperial’s administrative headquarters.
Entry to the building is usually controlled by swipe card entry gates
that allow access to a select group
of College staff; these are adjacent
to a manned security desk at the
entrance of the modern four-storey
building and are the main access
points for all personnel entering and
leaving the Faculty building.
Reporters were waved past the
desk on entry and left to roam freely
around the floors coming within feet
of Sir Richard’s office and mixing
with employees at a nearby coffee
bar.
Empty offices with thousands of
pounds worth of equipment and
confidential documents were all in
potential reach of the reporters.
After spending over 30 minutes in the
building, Felix left and returned an
hour later to be greeted by a different

receptionist who also granted access
without confirmation of prior appointments or identity.
Simon Davies, a first year physicist,
told Felix: “If College can’t keep the
Rector secure, what hope is there for
the student body?”
Samantha Perera, a second year
medical student, said: “Personally I
think far too much money is spent
on security as Imperial College and
the Rector are not high-risk terrorist
targets. The money could be better
spent on improving teaching facilities.”
Concerned with such lapses in
College security, Felix also attempted
to gain access to restricted areas in
the Sir Alexander Fleming Building
(SAF) and Union offices. Once inside
the SAF, we were able to tailgate a
researcher into a restricted access
area without being challenged. We
subsequently had open access to
research labs, some of which contained hazardous chemicals, as well
as expensive microscopy equipment.
Similar breaches occurred in the
Sabbatical offices, where no attention was paid as reporters passed
the Union reception and into the
unlocked vacant office of Deputy
President (Education and Welfare)
Sarah Khatib. Various valuables were
left unattended in the room, in direct
contravention to advice issued at the
Continued, page 3

The Biomedical Sciences division, located at the heart of Imperial’s Sir Alexander Fleming Building. Staff
working for the division are concerned about potential redundancies over the coming weeks.
Chris Miles
News Editor
The Division of Biomedical Sciences
(BMS) is facing potential closure this
week, with expected job cuts and staff
relocation of teaching and support
workers at the Sir Alexander Fleming
Building (SAF)

ment the early stages of their medical training.
A worried BMS research associate working at the SAF told Felix:
“More people here are worried about
their jobs than who’s going to teach
the medical students. The morale is
plummeting.
“We used to be part of the Imperial
College School of Medicine (ICSM)

improve its teaching in biomedical
sciences and medicine and to undertake research at the highest level.
“There are no proposals to change
our medical undergraduate courses
and we are looking forward to introducing our new Biomedical Science
course and subsequently graduate
entry medical course. Discussions
are continuing and the College will

Left to right: Chris Miles, Rupert Neate, and last year’s Felix design
Felix and its staff have been shortlisted in the prestigious Guardian
Student Media Awards. The newspaper itself was shortlisted in the
“Newspaper of the Year” category.
Felix’s companion science magazine, I, Science, was shortlisted in
the “Magazine of the year”. The
Felix editorial team of the previous
year have also been nominated individually. In what may surprise some
of those he antagonised in the Union and College, the previous editor,
Rupert Neate, has been nominated
twice, in the “Reporter of the Year”
category, and the “Travel writer of
the year” category. Mr Neate made
this comment to Felix: “I am over
the moon that Felix has been nomi-

nated for so many awards. I would
like to thank everyone who worked
for Felix last year. It is thanks to
all of their hard work that we have
been shortlisted for these prestigious awards. I’m elated to have received this recognition as our hard
-hitting investigative journalism did
not win me many friends in College
or Union bureaucracy. I won’t miss
the all-nighters every Tuesday, but
it looks like they were worth it.”
Felix’s news editor during Mr
Neate’s term, Chris Miles, has also
been shortlisted in the “Reporter
of the year” category, giving Felix
two entries compared to one from
the other student newspapers
competing.

4

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

BUSINESS

business.felix@imperial.ac.uk

You are going to pay me how much?
Should we worry about the increasing trend of graduates forsaking further education for a city career?
Will Piovano
Business Correspondent
Jane is in her final year of Mechanical Engineering. She has got a good
master’s degree coming, is the
president of two societies, and all
her friends say she is golden company. After three brain-crunching
years of polymers and stress-analysis, the opportunities of the wide
world are open to her. NASA? Nah.
R&D? Wrong. No, Jane is off to become an investment banker. Why
not; after all, the pay is stellar and
most of her friends are doing it too!
Her friend Nasser has got the top
score in Physics. Theoretical physics, particle physics, you name it
– he has been through it. And where
is he going to work? You guessed
it. Nasser studied neutrinoless
double-beta decay and quantum
teleportation, and yet he is sitting
with Jane on the Equities Floor of
Morgan Someguy, cracking out his
seventeenth hour of derivatives
trading.
Investment banking. The mere
name is a synonym for the big green
bucks and your own self-image at
thirty, on your way to the Wharf or
the City in the brand new Maserati

that last month’s bonus easily covered. Work hard, play hard, they
say; sounds just right for Imperial
students.
But what is this banking world;
more than a cluster of skyscrapers where the financial elite trade
in invisible shares worth more than
anything you have ever, correction,
will ever, own?
To me, it’s an academic black hole.
I don’t know about other places, but
at least 75% of my department’s
graduates migrate to investment
banks. That’s a lot of minds gone
to the wind. It is also the driving
reason behind half of our MEng
students changing to the three year
BEng course. That sounds like kidnapping to me.
Now, before things are taken the
wrong way, let me say this: investment banking can be very intellectually challenging. Believe it or not,
some people are born and bred for
these positions - trust me, I know
a few. But is it not puzzling (and
perhaps worrying) that Jane and
Nasser have all this specialised
knowledge under their belts, but
we still find both of them clicking
away stocks from NASDAQ? Where
is our average Joe ‘LSE’ Johnson?

Has he grown bored of the suit-andtie and fled to a PhD in neutrinoless
double-beta decay?
I don’t know. All I know is that the
banking world has more perks to
offer than any of its competitors. I
know, I’ve been there. Where else
can you get paid such a ridiculous
- it really deserves a grander adjective - salary. One gags on one’s
tongue when reading the contract.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll take it…”
Ka-ching! Dollar signs slot down
over the eyes. “I could just do two
years, then go on vacation…” Before you know it, you’re sitting in
the toilet cubicle on the fourteenth
floor, absently reaching for the roll
of twenty-pound notes, which have
replaced toilet paper, and counting the seconds lost away from the
trading desk.
Variety is the spice of life. If we all
become bankers, life will be boring,
and everything will be expensive.
Make sure it’s what you really want
to do. Ah, but who are we kidding?
When that phone call arrives, and
the sweet voice of Ms HR whispers
into your ear, I’ll hear that same
old phrase which shatters every
man’s resistance: “You’re paying
me what?!”

The newly opened Tanaka Business School demonstrates the
increasing demand for finance sector jobs

This week’s business news

Banking in brief

■ A US federal judge made an
historical ruling against tobacco
companies. A claim filed in 2004
alleged that products were misleading consumers by marketing
“light” cigarettes as comparatively safe. The ruling in favour
of this claim could pave the way
for a class-action suit that would
include millions of smokers, making it the largest civil law suit that
America has ever seen. Share
prices in tobacco companies fell
sharply.

Michael Olymbios
Business Editor

Oil prices rallied after representatives from the Organisation
of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) informally agreed
to cut output by 1 million barrels
per day. The move was the first
reduction since 2004, and was
widely anticipated after Nigeria
and Venezuela announced they
would step down production. The
move come amidst concerns that
oil prices would fall if the market
became oversupplied.

■

Eurozone interest rates are
likely to rise before the end of the
year. The comments came from
Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank (ECB) after
an meeting in Paris. A quarter of
a percent rise is set to come about
before the end of the year.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its highest level
since January 2000. Some economists are critical of the index’s
capacity as a barometer for the
US economy since it is comprised
of only thirty share prices.
■

■ Rupert Murdoch, owner of News

Corporation, announced plans to
release a version of MySpace™ in

US federal judge makes historical ruling against tobacco industry
China. He bought MySpace™ last
year as part of his digital-age strategy. MySpace™ became one of the
most visited sites on the internet
because of the ease with which people could share text, pictures and
video. Mr Murdoch said MySpace™
China was likely to have local partners who would own fifty per cent.
The share prices of online gambling firms collapsed after new legislation was passed stopping banks
and credit card companies making
payments to them. This has effectively banned American punters
from using such sites.
■

top caught fire at a Los Angeles
airport. Subsequently, Dell and
Apple recalled the battery model.
■ The days of market rumours
spread on exchange floors are
numbered as market gossip
has found a high-tech forum. A
new automated system will sift
through forty million sources
each day, from blogs to newswires. The platform, called Monitor110, is to be run by a former
Deutsche Bank executive who
is selling the software to hedge
funds.

Europe’s biggest low-cost airline, Ryanair, launched a takeover bid for Aer Lingus. The Irish
airline made its stock debut last
week, prompting Ryanair to begin the acquisition by purchasing
16 per cent of the shares on offer.

■

Sony’s share price fell sharply after two new companies – Toshiba
and Fujitsu – reported problems
with laptop batteries having the potential to overheat. The issue was
brought to light when an IBM lap-

■

of businesses.
The job of a trader is to facilitate
the buying and selling of financial
instruments, e.g. stocks, bonds,
currencies and a vast range of
products. Traders provide ‘liquidity’, allowing traders to buy and sell
on demand, without having to wait
for an individual executing the opposite trade. Propriety traders take
positions on behalf of the bank. This
means that they buy and sell in the
hope of benefiting from a rise or fall
in the market directly.
This introduction will have hopefully sparked interest and given you
an insight into the banking world.

There are two distinctive types of
banking: commercial banking and
investment banking. Commercial
banking involves financial intermediation, i.e. the borrowing and lending of cash between individuals and
smaller companies.
A commercial bank’s role includes the finding of those seeking
to borrow and to lend, the drawing
up of contracts, and calculating the
probability of the debtor being unable to pay the loan. The greater the
risk that the borrower will default
on the loan, the
higher the interest rate will be.
The banks profit
by charging a
higher rate of interest to borrow
than they pay
out to those depositing funds.
Investment
banks do not
have
inventories of cash for
the
purposes
of lending. Although
the
structure var- Wall Street: the place to find most investment banks
ies from bank to
bank, broadly speaking, there are
corporate finance, financial instrument sales and trading and syndicate divisions.
The corporate finance division
is responsible for equity (shares),
debt underwriting and mergers
and acquisitions (M&A). These activities involve raising capital for
www3.imperial.ac.uk/
companies by selling shares in the
entrepreneurship/
company or by selling debt products, and advising on and impleentrepreneurschallenge
menting the joining of or selling-off

Do you have an
idea for a business
but do not know
where to begin?

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

FEATURE

felix@imperial.ac.uk

Imperial’s bright young things
Imperial Entrepreneurs describe how it is changing perceptions of the business world and how a selection
of industrious students have cleared their debt and made a very tidy profit in the process.
After a summer lazing about watching The Apprentice or Dragon’s
Den you could be forgiven if you
thought starting a company was
simply glorified self-humiliation. A
dynamic new organisation created
by active student entrepreneurs
from within Imperial wants to
change that for the better. Sumon
Sadhu, President & Co-founder of
Imperial Entrepreneurs, who previously worked under Dragon’s
Den judge Doug Richard, explains
further: “The perception of business plans and suits is dated. Real
entrepreneurs define themselves in
terms of what they’ve actually done
when opportunities arise, not what
they procrastinated. We’re here to
address that image.”
Indeed, some of the biggest businesses in the world didn’t follow
their first business plan. Microsoft,
founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in a Harvard dorm room in 1975
would have folded had it followed its
original plan to avoid operating systems in the first place. The stories
of Microsoft, Dell, Google and Apple all started in dorm rooms, and
illustrate what’s possible by going
beyond the lectures and problem
sheets. “There’s probably no better
time to start a venture than now,
surrounded by some of the smartest people you’ve ever met, and
some of the best opportunities,”
says Sebastian Wolf, co-founder of
Imperial Entrepreneurs.
Apart from acting to change the
perception of entrepreneurship,
the society has made headway in
the entrepreneurial world itself. It
has already established significant
partnerships with The Glasshouse,
described as ‘the epicentre of London’s internet scene’ and TiE-UK,
the UK branch of the largest entrepreneurial network in the world.
These partnerships will open unique
opportunities for IE members to
network, find mentors and above
all, learn from real-world entrepreneurs. In addition, the society’s

website,
imperialentrepreneurs.
com, is powered by the ‘Synergy’
database. This database allows all
members to list their interests and
actively seek out potential partners
to start ventures with.
“Entrepreneurs are real people,
and they’re probably some of the
most interesting characters you’ll
come across as they’re always striving to think differently. We want to
connect our members to the community that exists here in London,”
says communications officer, Mahmoud Usman.
The registration-only Launch
Party for Imperial Entrepreneurs
will provide the ideal opportunity
for IC students to come in contact
with the London entrepreneurial
community. Building its reputation,
the society has attracted big names
such as Alex Tew (founder of milliondollarhomepage.com), Michael
Smith (co-founder of Firebox.com
and MindCandy Design CEO) and
Charlie Osmond (founder of Freshminds) as speakers for its launch
event on October 19.
Imperial Entrepreneurs forms
the sixth society in a network of
nationwide entrepreneurship societies, acting to change the culture
at UK universities. This group includes Oxford and the LSE, with
whom the society is hosting events
later this year.
“Imperial Entrepreneurs is here
to provide people with the inspiration, education, networking and experience to empower their ideas.”
Wolf says. “We’re already seeing
startups everywhere around Imperial. This gives us an opportunity
to link together students who are
thinking different.”
“With or without grand visions of
the future, or an idea ready to go,
entrepreneurship can become very
real for anyone who chooses it.”
Wolf explains, “And that’s just it.
Entrepreneurship isn’t a job, it’s a
mindset. Even if you don’t want to
start a company, you can still nur-

Entrepreneur Alex Tew, creator of milliondollarhomepage.com, enjoying a hearty breakfast.
ture the inner entrepreneur. Talk to
the beautiful stranger, find the best
in each problem, don’t stop at setbacks in any walks of life – in short,
grab life and live it!” The future for
Imperial Entrepreneurs at this university definitely looks bright.
The Imperial Entrepreneurs
launch party is on October 19 at
7.00pm in the Tanaka Business
School. Register for free at:
www.imperialentrepreneurs.com

Don’t dream it, do it
As far-fetched as it sounds,
it’s possible to set up a profit
making venture in an afternoon. GimperialClothing.com
was founded by IE committee
members to prove this point.
In a single Saturday afternoon,
IE’s President, Sumon Sadhu,
and Secretary, Sebastian Wolf,
composed T-Shirt designs, created a website and advertised
the venture on facebook.com.
By Monday, a profit had already
been made. “People may have
thought it was just a great idea.
We actually went out and did it
for fun,” Sadhu says. “That’s the
message we want to convey:
Don’t dream it, do it.” The following is a selection of entrepreneurs who didn’t just dream.
Alex Tew,
Milliondollarhomepage.com
Dreaming up ways of funding
his way through his degree, Alex
ended up with the intention of
finding a way to earn a million
dollars. He came up with the
idea of creating a website with
one million small pixels which
would be sold to advertisers for
$1 each. Rather than throwing
the idea out as crazy, Alex decided to take a leap of faith and
start it off. Interest in the idea
snowballed and Alex used this
to his advantage culminating in
him making $1million in just 5
months. Alex only had time to
attend two lectures that term,
because of his success.

Michael Smith, co-founder of Firebox.com and MindCandy CEO.

Michael Smith,
Firebox.com &
MindCandy Design
After leaving university, Michael
and his friend Tom Boardman
imagined creating a website
solely focussed on selling boys’
toys and gadgets. The pair
invented the shot glass chess
set which propelled sales from
Firebox.com allowing Michael to
turn the company into the one
of the fastest-growing internet
companies in the UK. Now
Michael has started up MindCandy Design, creators of www.
perplexcity.com. Two years on
and MindCandy has raised a
cool $6 million in investment!
Charlie Osmond,
Freshminds Ltd
Holding a number of top
job offers with management
consultancies, Charlie had a
dilemma – should he stick with
a job or start his own company? Fortunately he made the
right decision, and together
with fellow engineer Caroline
Plumb founded Freshminds, a
recruitment consultancy for top
students. After starting in their
parent’s spare bedroom, the pair
grew the company to £1 million
a year in sales in three years!
Inspired? See Alex Tew,
Michael Smith and Charlie
Osmond speak at the Imperial
Entrepreneurs launch party.

5

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felix

Friday 13 October 2006

SCIENCE

7

science.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Caffeine addict confessions

Best of
the rest

Illegal, immoral, and worth as much as oil. Well after all, heroin is so passé
Krystyna Larkham
Science Editor
It’s illegal in parts of Northern
Thailand, hospitals and universities run on it, endurance athletes
enhance their performance with it,
and 300 years ago, it could be used
as grounds for divorce. Only the oil
industry has a greater volume of
worldwide trade. As I drain my coffee cup a fourth time this evening
and feel renewed strength running
through my veins, I look back at
the humble caffeine molecule, and
what makes it so dear to our faster
beating hearts.
The story goes that around
850BC, an Ethiopian goat herder,
Kaldi, noticed his goats getting high
on some pretty red berries, and decided to give them a taste himself.
The craze soon spread, and before
long coffee trees were being grown
all along the Arabian peninsular.
The drink soon took on religious
connotations, being used as a meditative drink within the Muslim tradition. It was so sacred that those
caught drinking coffee in Constantinople, home of the world’s first
coffee house, were beaten the first
time, and if caught again, thrown
into the river sewn in a leather bag
to drown.
The caffeine molecule itself mimics the shape of adenosine, a neurotransmitter involved in suppressing many cell pathways. It binds

Gosh! You mean after a whole
week of lectures you still want
more? Well, you’ve picked
a good week for it. Starting
tonight, at 18.30, David Bullock
is talking about “Conservation
on the grand scale” at Birkbeck
College. Be there, or be whatever is the opposite of green.
If you’re a scientist, but want
to make money, find out how
on October 17 at the Tanaka
Business School. Dr John Hassard, an Imperial alumnus, is
coming to talk about his very
successful company deltadot.
The event is free, sponsored by
IC Entrepreneurs.
For over 18s only, the Dana
Centre is holding a two-day
event “Fairground: Thrill Laboratory-Pleasure” starting October 17. The event costs £10 and
includes live experimentation
on the “Miami Trip” as well as
canapés, fizzy pop, oh, and a
number of talks.
And finally: reading list looking too long? No need to read
the entire IC library, just mosey
on down to G16, Sir Alexander
Fleming Building at 6.30pm on
Thursday, October 19, hand
over your £8, and listen to Dr
Armand Leroi, Maggie McDonald, and Tim Radford who’ll tell
you what you need in their talk
“The best science books ever”.

to adenosine receptor molecules
in the synapse, allowing chemical
pathways to continue unhindered,
hence caffeine’s stimulatory role.
An overdose can be fatal, and even
at ‘normal’ (student) consumption,
caffeine can result in reduced fine
motor co-ordination, increased
heart rate, insomnia, nervousness and dizziness. The blocking
of adenosine receptors causes the
body to manufacture extra ones to
compensate, so a drop of caffeine
causes oversensitivity to the neurotransmitter. This results in a dramatic drop in blood pressure, leading to the ‘give me coffee’ headache
around half past three.
It’s not all bad though. A cup of
coffee a day makes you significantly less likely to top yourself, and it
does wonders for the sex life of the
elderly.
Meanwhile, a tiny espresso taken
with a Gaulouises and a hefty dose
of French philosophy is almost
certain to get you laid in certain
circles, and even the most dyed-inthe-silicon computer scientist won’t
mistake the meaning behind ‘Do
you fancy coming up for a coffee?’
So put the kettle on, put your feet
up, and give thanks to the humble
coffee bean, preamble of first dates
and saviour of students. After all,
heroin is so passé.

Re-printed by kind permission
from Varsity.

Wake up and smell the coffee

www.gsk.com/uk-students

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But, it might surprise you to discover that there are critical and challenging opportunities for
people with no background in science but with some interest in the pharmaceutical industry.
In fact, our continued dominance of the global pharmaceutical market depends upon
identifying the very best talent, in both the scientific and non science arenas.
And that means that there are all kinds of opportunities for talented individuals in a variety of
disciplines to join us and build a global career.
You'll be playing a vital role in driving the discovery and development of our successes,
and helping people around the world live longer, happier, healthier lives.
To apply now and find out more about how you can build a truly global career, please visit our
website www.gsk.com/uk-students

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GSK is proud to promote an open culture, encouraging people to be
themselves and giving their ideas a chance to flourish.
GSK is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

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unionpage
All about… Fees.

A Message

The fight is not over

from the President

Itʼs a new academic year and change is
everywhere in Imperial. The JCR no longer
resembles an airport lounge, pink appears
to be Collegeʼs favourite colour and new
undergraduates are now paying £3000 for the
privilege of coming to study at Imperial. Yes,
after the demonstrations, lobbies and media
frenzy over top-up fees two years ago they
are ﬁnally arriving on campus. After all, what
better way to celebrate the Collegeʼs centenary
than by giving that most special of gifts; debt.
Several years hence the bright-eyed Freshers
that appeared on campus last week will emerge
bleary eyed into the real world with not only a
degree but up to £44,000 of debt.
The principle of free higher education is dead.
Fees have been with us since 1998, in the
intervening years student debt has rocketed
and more and more students have had to take
part time employment to ensure that they can
survive at university. This increased pressure on
time and money prevents students from making
the most of their time at university with both
academic and social lives suﬀering. If this is the
legacy of paying up to £1200 in tuition fees,
then the impact of top-up fees will be far worse.
Of course, the outlook could be even poorer.
When top-up fees were introduced our Rector
was one of those arguing bitterly that £3000
simply wasnʼt enough – why not charge more?
Why not charge £12000 more? Of course, he
hasnʼt changed his mind since then. Top up
fees are capped at £3000 (give or take inﬂation)
until 2010, at which point the government
had promised a “review”. The College, along

with other leading
institutions, has already
begun lobbying hard
to remove the limit on
the amount they can
charge students. Four
years may be an awfully
Ben Matthews
long time in politics,
Deputy President
but if we are to win
(Education & Welfare)
the battle against the
dpew@imperial.ac.uk
complete marketisation
of education we need
to start ﬁghting now. And we canʼt aﬀord to
rely on the publicʼs sympathy for poor, starving
students – we need solid arguments to support
what we know to be right.
We need to remind the government and the
general public that a university education
doesnʼt only beneﬁt the individual. The beneﬁt
to industry, business and society as a whole
cannot be understated. The students of today
will be the leaders of tomorrow in ﬁelds ranging
from politics to nano-technology.
To start the debate, NUS are organising a
national demonstration as part of a wider
campaign against top-up fees and raising the
cap on Sunday the 29th October. Despite not
being NUS members Imperial College Union
will be joining the demonstration. More details
and publicity will be heading your way in the
not too distant future, but if you want any more
information or would like to get involved in
organising this campaign please get in touch
with me at dpew@imperial.ac.uk.

Dear All
As Ben is writing the lionʼs
share of this weekʼs page, I
will try to keep my column
brief. My main message to
you this week is that the
John Collins
deadline for elections is fast
approaching (nominations close
President
this Sunday night) and there
president@imperial.ac.uk
are still a handful of vacant
positions up for grabs. This month we are running
elections for IC Union Council members, Faculty Union
Oﬃcers, Graduate Student Association Oﬃcers and ULU
Delegates. Being a Union Oﬃcer can be an interesting,
fun and enjoyable experience and holding a position of
responsibility will encourage you to develop new skills
and interests. Becoming a Union Oﬃcer can also be a
great way of improving your CV - I regularly receive
phone calls and emails from graduate employers who
tell me that they speciﬁcally target students who hold
positions of responsibility in the Union and other
extra-curricular activities. So, if you are interested
in standing then please go to our website www.
imperialcollegeunion.org/vote and if you want to know
more about these elections and the positions that are
open for nominations this month then please email me
at president@imperial.ac.uk.
If you want an opportunity to question the candidates
who are running for these positions, then please come
along to our public hustings. These will be taking
place in the JCR at lunchtime and the Reynolds bar in
the evening on Thursday 19th October. Finally, please
remember to vote in these elections - all voting is
online and only takes a moment of your time. I will
send you an email as soon as voting opens towards the
end of this month

D
N
STA

!
!
!
Stand in the Council Elections 2006

Places are available for Ordinary Members of Council, Equal Opportunities Officer & Welfare
Campaigns Officer and ULU Delegates. Also Graduate Students’ Association and Faculty Unions.
Look online for more information at imperialcollegeunion.org/elections
Nominations close Sunday 15th October at 23:59.

Felix needs you.
Felix depends on your contributions
to survive.
We are currently in need of:
• People with newspaper layout experience in
InDesign.

felix

• A dedicated news editor, who can coordinate with reporters and the editor to
introduce external news round-up pieces.
• News reporters for both internal and
external news.
• A sports editor, responsible for collating and
laying out sports reports.
• Reviewers for all our review sections,
including music, film, arts, books, games,
food, fashion, nightlife, and others.
• Writers for our news-related sections, like
business, science and politics.
• Feature writers, willing to research and draft
feature articles.
Contact us.
You can e-mail us at felix@imperial.ac.uk,
stating what you are interested in, or just to
ask for more information.

10

O
pinion
&

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

Comment

NUS: Is there any point?

Stephen Brown voices his concerns about student politicians abusing their mandate
in an attempt to further their chances of fulfilling their political ambitions.

T
Stephen Brown
Comment Editor

“At times the
NUS seems to
act less like a
representative
body for students
and more like
a graduate
recruitment
programme for
the Labour Party.”

hose of you new to IC
may be unaware that
our student body is notoriously apathetic. You
wouldn’t have noticed
this if you were accosted at the
Freshers’ Fair by one of the many
individuals armed with clipboards
seeking your signature for a petition for a referendum on affiliation
to the national student body. Well
its good to know there are so many
volunteers committed to the spirit
of public debate that they will give
up an entire day to promote one.
Was that not selfless of them? Everybody loves a good argument and
I was so impressed I even signed
myself. However I was slightly saddened to find out that in retrospect
this was nothing but a stunt by an
assorted collection of Marxists,
New Labour apologists and the
plain naïve. Unsurprisingly, these
groups are all strongly in favour of
joining.
At the last referendum on whether
or not we should affiliate to the National Union of Students the result
was an overwhelming 72% in favour
of ICU retaining its independence,
preferring instead to stick with
ULU for external representation.
With Imperial leaving the University of London we are no longer eligible for ULU membership so again
our involvement with student collectives is up for discussion.
Depending on whom you ask, the
NUS will be described in various
ways. Those in favour of joining
speak of it as a nice fluffy organisation of discount cards and individuals who dedicate their lives to the
student welfare cause. Others are
more sceptical, instead seeing it as
nothing but a talking shop for wan-

nabe waffle spewing politicians.
If we are going to have a debate
let’s go back to first principles and
try and define what the NUS is actually for. What does it mean for it
to be a “National Union”? Apparently one of the benefits of joining
is that NUS representatives can
lobby ministers. I find this a rather
strange concept since education
policy has now been devolved to
Edinburgh and Cardiff. This makes
it a bit silly for the NUS to claim
that it can effectively lobby on behalf of the whole of the country. If
they let the Scots join in the party
then why not the French, Mexican
or Sri Lankan universities? The
truth is that the NUS spends a lot
of time (and students’ money) on
debating and passing motions with
little direct relevance to us. According to NUS records in January 2006
a motion was passed which seems
to give them a mandate to campaign against the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Pros and
cons of nuclear weapons aside, I’m
sure we can all agree that this has
absolutely nothing to do with life on
campus. It just serves to illustrate
how useless an organisation it is
when the NUS has absolutely no
impact on the issues that matter,
such as top up fees, but its officers
seem to have plenty of time to waste
debating and campaigning on what
could best be described as ethical
niceties. I would love to be paid to
sit around to pontificate the world
but I don’t think its an appropriate
use of our money.
Now we need to discuss what it
means these days to be a student.
A recent league table ranks Imperial as one of the worlds leading
academic institutions. This should

mean we have a far more powerful
voice than your bog-standard university. The top universities in the
UK have interests so far removed
from some of the current members
of the NUS that the link between us
all as students is at best tenuous.
Our needs are different from most.
We have a far greater number of research and overseas students than
your average institution. Employers are perfectly aware that not all
universities are equal. If we joined
the NUS then our voice would carry
equal weight to an institution that
matches us in terms of quantity but
not in terms of quality of students.
With around 50% of school leavers
now entering higher education the
idea that they will all have the same
priorities that NUS representatives
lobby for is a bit far fetched.
In conclusion, unless you are
particularly worried about nuclear
missiles being stationed on Queens
Lawn, then the NUS is irrelevant to
you. At best it is a well meaning, but
ultimately feckless, (top up fees are
here to stay, well done NUS!) lobbying group. At worst it represents
what we hate about career politicians the most as at times it seems
to be acting less like a representative body for students and more like
a graduate recruitment programme
for the Labour Party. The question
we will all have to ask ourselves is
do we want our money spent so that
some of our more politically ambitious colleagues can sanctimoniously grandstand on our behalf or
would we rather the money was
kept in South Kensington? Personally, I’d rather spend the cash buying everyone a pint than giving one
penny of it to a bunch of self-serving
politicos.

So you think you want to be a doctor?

I
Seema Pattni
“Doctors and
medical students
seem more
geared towards
selfish gain than
patient care.”

ts 6.45am. Most students are
still asleep or just crawling
into bed but for the poor sod
that is the third year medical
student, life is different. The
daily grind consists of early mornings and late evenings in a place
where anonymity and lack of identity is rife. Where one is expected
to enjoy humiliation, where the
expectation is to don a white coat
and creep to impress seniors. One
should not speak one’s mind or talk
out of place. One should be seen
and not heard. One should only
speak when spoken to. One is expected to accept that they are insignificant and should remain humble
and grateful if anyone notices them.
One should understand the concept
that the Consultant is God, the only
God and that no other God exists.
One should always be God-fearing.
God is always right, God is allowed
to be late and God is allowed to bully you and say what he likes about
you in front of the angels that work
for him. God is not so merciful and

forgiving anymore.
The angels rush about stressed
and sweaty, taking blood, asking
patients ‘targeted questions’ and
squirm whenever God enters the
ward looking angry. The difference
between this God and these angels and those that are believed to
reside in what is currently a grey
and cloudy sky is that key desirable
qualities (compassion and empathy) have faded. The focus of hospital medicine is somewhat corrupt
– it’s less about care for the patient
and more about personal profit.
Competitiveness is the universal
theme, a drive to be the best academic, the best at networking. It’s
terribly ironic that in a place which
is meant to be about caring for people who are sick; caring people are
far from being omnipresent. Humanity, also, is a rare gem. The job
has become a lot more mechanical,
a robot could do it now – actually,
some robots are doing it now.
Doctors and medical students
seem more geared towards self-

ish gain than patient care. ‘Doctor’
comes from the Latin word “docere”
meaning “to teach’’. Shouldn’t doctors be using their knowledge to
help people? I went into Medicine
thinking it was about being part of a
service to others. I thought doctors
would show humility and compassion. I was naïve enough to think
that doctors and medical students
would have a genuine motive behind their work and actions.
Only now, dumped in the midst
of it all, do I realise that being a
thoughtful, attentive and caring
doctor is not easy in the hospital
environment. It takes someone who
has decided to train as a doctor out
of sincerity. It takes someone who
can endure all the financial and time
pressures that the NHS prescribes
sparingly and free of charge, someone who can rise above the dog-eatdog, back-stabbing environment. It
takes someone who wants to care.
Unfortunately, it seems that this
model is temporarily out of stock
and too expensive for the NHS.

Halls
watch

Vasa Curcin

W

hen joining any
wardening team
you’re bound to
get told that it is
a stressful but
fulfilling experience, that you need
to keep your wits about you at all
time and that the first weeks can
be very hectic. It is this last point
that invariably gets overlooked.
When the hall seniors move in you
end up in some sort of a teambuilding scenario – rafting, paintball,
camping, depending on the Warden’s levels of sadism – and start
doing a million and one things that
transform a hall from a hostel into
something approaching a home.
Now, Piccadilly Court is what we
call an “outlying” hall, which usually leads to a large number of questions before term starts, that go
along the lines of: “I really hoped
to live next door to College and roll
straight out of bed into the lecture
hall. Could you do something about
it? Yours truly, xxx”. To which I
usually reply with a reflection on
the beneficial aspects of book-reading on the Piccadilly Line. Adding
a book recommendation, if I feel
wordy. Still, once people move in,
they tend to see the good sides of
their predicament too – the West
End, Camden, a 55” plasma screen
and a courtyard to name a few.
The idea of the first week of term
is to get students to meet as many
other residents as possible. There
are some tried and tested ways of
achieving this, like the boat party.
The principle underlying the boat
party is that a group of people will
turn to each other for comfort and
support, if left with no other option.
Since our budget does not allow
us to stage a fully-fledged Lost
re-enactment and hire a tropical
island, placing everyone on a boat
for good five hours is an acceptable
alternative. Our crowd this year
seemed to have enjoyed themselves, helped by an enthusiastic
DJ who took upon herself to teach
the entire room some latino moves.
Later this term we’ll be taking the
students to a gala evening with a
masquerade theme and to a string
of other events. The other, less
visible but more important, side
of wardening starts now as well.
Many of the students who moved
in will run into problems with their
course, the new surroundings and
cultures. We try to step in when we
notice this happening and we are
always on hand for help. Plus, we
don’t mind being woken up at 3am
for a good reason. Honest.

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

COMMENT & OPINION

Wielding the
mighty organ

comment.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Power over principle?
Do politicians really believe in what they tell us? Hugh StickleyMansfield discusses whether politicians sell out in pursuit of power.

E

Andy Sykes
Editor-in-chief

E

ditorials. At least 300 words of varying coherence about either a) the editor’s recent
exploits, or b) some kind of topical comment
on a recent issue. Inspiration was sparse the
morning I wrote this, so I took a little drift
through the archives to see what prior holders of this
post wrote. They vary from the dry and informative (cf.
Dave Edwards) to the rather vitriolic rants about the
College’s latest idiotic move (cf. Alex Coby), via catharctic diary-esque confessions (cf. Will Dugdale). Being, as
I am, gradually sobering up from numerous glasses of
ICU house wine, I thought: hey, I could do all of those
at once.
First up: dear diary. When I stood for this position,
many, many moons ago, it hadn’t really filtered in to my
conciousness that the workload would be so overwhelming, despite having seen editors come and go. However,
I will not whinge about my lack of a social life outside
the confines of this Union building, or about the fact that
my house has become somewhere I merely shower and
sleep. I will however, whinge about the fact that life loves
to kick you over and over again, in the crotch, when you
least expect it.
Secondly, I’ll be informative. Although it’s been repeated countless times to the point that it’s become dangerously cliched, Felix is your student newspaper. You may
have noticed the first two issues of the term were rather
skinny, and some of you made your feelings clear on the
matter while I was distributing the newspaper around
campus. If you want to write features, help me research
news stories, write reviews, start a new section, vent
your thoughts onto medium-quality newsprint, or help
design the newspaper, then get in touch with me. I’m
in the office most days, in the bar most nights, and you
can always e-mail me on felix@imperial.ac.uk. We’re a
friendly bunch in the West Basement.
I would rant here about some idiotic move of the College or the Union, but it appears that both bodies are
either horribly corrupt and incredibly good at hiding it,
or are in fact doing quite a good job. The new Graduate
Student Association elections have the appearance of
becoming a complete farce, with a single person standing and very little advertising. Though the redevelopment of Da Vinci’s was rushed to open, the bar is beginning to look more homely by the day, and your editor
has high hopes that it will become a rather nice drinking
establishment before the term is out. The sabbs are beavering away quietly, and Freshers’ Fair was really quite
enjoyable.
On the subject of freshers: man, you guys look happy.
I sincerely hope that your good spirits aren’t broken by
either your departments or the rather mopey older students. I’ve found you both approachable and cheerful in
my travels around campus. Keep it up.

arlier today I was astonished
to hear previous Conservative leader William Hague on
the radio, sounding perfectly
reasonable. What was even
more astounding was that this was the
second time in recent months that this
has happened.
Of course, what I would consider to
be reasonable is not the same as what
many others would, and I do not doubt
that thousands of people considered
much of what he said whilst leader of
the opposition to be every bit as reasonable as I see him to be now. However,
that I should agree with everything he
had to say is certainly surprising, given
how rarely I did so beforehand is quite
striking.
The shift may well be at my end, it
certainly is not unusual for someone’s
political leanings to err more toward
the right as they grow up, but it seems
unlikely. I hold fairly centrist views now,
and have never been much of a supporter of the left, even as a naïve youth (or,
if you prefer, as a more naïve youth), so
the change seems more likely to have

there are principled politicians in this
country, and I was terribly moved by
his death not too long afterwards. A
cynical mind might claim that I simply
dislike politicians, only seeing the good
in them once they had had their wings
clipped or fallen on their swords but,
knowing myself far better than this hypothetical observer, I would disagree. I
think it more likely that so many of the
politicians with whom I disagree hold
similar views to my own, but are fully
aware that they would be thoroughly
unelectable if they told the public that
whilst they were looking to come to
power, or even to retain it.
This comes back to a point I touched
on earlier, in that it may well paint me
as somewhat naïve in believing that
everyone in power secretly agrees with
me. But of course, I don’t believe everyone in power does, merely that there
are more who do than is apparent from
their rhetoric. More significantly, the
thought is far from a happy one since
the core of it is that even those who
(perhaps) think as I do cannot be seen
to pursue policies that I would support,

which would make the whole situation
seem utterly hopeless, were it anything
more than idle conjecture.
Unfortunately, my theory is backed up
by the party with whom I most associate being almost universally accepted
as being entirely unelectable. Understandably then, I have noticed a worrying tendency in myself to consider watering down my principles in order to
make myself more appealing to potential voters, should I ever stand for election (to be fair, it would be a damn sight
easier than anything else that might do
so, such as not shouting at people with
whom I disagree, writing more concisely or making less oblique jokes).
However, what I find most disturbing
is the one piece of evidence that most
shows my arguments to be more than
a little flawed - as David Cameron settles in, he seems more and more to be
aligning himself with my own positions
on many issues.
The upshot of this is that, at least initially I would be happy for him to win
the next election, which is not something about which I am entirely happy.

“I find it very
disconcerting to
find a man I had
long considered
anathema to my
own position
echoing my views
so closely.”
occurred at Mr Hague’s end. Regardless of where the change may lie, I find
it very disconcerting to find a man I had
long considered anathema to my own
position echoing my views so closely.
This is by no means the first time
I have found this to be the case; for a
long time I considered Robin Cook to
be a thoroughly unpleasant chap, but
his resignation restored my faith that

William Hague, a perfectly reasonable man, now he’s not a politician.

Letters to the Editor
Dear Felix,
Having just spent the last hour of my
life running around chasing swipe
cards and discovering that not only
does it state my details from my UG
but as a result was sent to completely
the wrong department. Consequently,
I’ve been missing the all important bit
of plastic but then, having gone to the
ID card desk, I find that the problem is
with registry who a) have the longest
queues in the world, can they please
hire a new member of staff and generally sort their lives out, and b) forgot to
tick one box on my profile which, had it
been done in the first place by someone
competent would have saved myself
a great deal of time and effort and
reduced their queues.
In summary, Registry is a big heap
of steaming…surely they could at least
hire a temp for the start of term when
they are in particular demand. Can we
please destroy it and replace it with a
service with greater capacity, shorter

queues and more and better staff? I
will happily volunteer to start doing a
Berlin wall job and tearing it apart with
my bare hands. Why does it have to
suck so much?
Peter Burgess
Dear Editor,
Hugh Stickley-Mansfield makes a valid
case against the increasing racism
targeted towards Americans. Such an
attitude is both reactionary and missing the point. A little like Hugh’s article. Opposition towards the American
nation from those of us who care about
global injustice and inequality stems
not from a lack of friendliness or intelligence of those Americans we meet on
holiday, nor from a jealousy towards
America’s ‘success’ since they ‘kicked
the British out’. America is a country
with much to offer the world and has a
culture which every other society could
learn much from.
However, current antipathy towards

the country is driven by its political
system – one that requires Senators, Congressmen and Presidents to
be multimillionaires with extensive
corporate backing; that produces a
president with too much control over
international affairs; that pursues global hegemony ruthlessly and imposes
democracy upon sovereign nations in
the face of national, regional and world
opinion.
To most of US critics, the US is a
country run by corporations negligent
of humanity and the environment.
Whether you believe it is through
ignorance, religious zealously, propaganda or disillusionment, the government have successfully secured the
support of the citizens they can rarely
be said to represent. It is this system
that most of us despair against. AntiAmericanism should never mean the
rejection of the American people themselves, but the role of their government
and its military across the world.
Darryl Croft

Some think
it’s about nibbles.
We think
it’s about
networking.

Firmwide
Presentation
31 October
6.30pm
Cabot Hall
Canary Wharf.

Don’t come along to our Firmwide presentation just for the fine food and wine.
Come to hear all about the career opportunities and training we offer to
talented students like you seeking a career in investment banking.
To register, please email us at graduate.recruitment@credit-suisse.com
by 27 October 2006. You will be notified on Monday 30th October if you
have secured a place.
For more information about us and what we have to offer, log on to
www.credit-suisse.com/standout

Matty Hoban
Hello and welcome to the first ever Felix Music Monthly or Femm as I have dubbed it. It
is Felix’s music-loving girlfriend – but don’t
tell them that we’ve have them both neutered. If you haven’t guessed by the name
this is a pull-out that will occur every month.
The role of this pull-out is to discuss music
past a few reviews and inane comment from
yours truly. We care about music and hope
you do too, so we are going to present features to you as well as reviews.

felix live TONIGHT!
If you head into the Union tonight (Friday 13th October) you
can see three bands for FREE
before 9pm. After 9pm it is £3
so get there early. Onstage at
9pm is The Sailplanes, a band
hand picked by Felix to support
two bands selected by the Union Ents. The headliner is Ross
Copperman who The Sun said
about his debut EP, ‘Effortless
Falsetto and Soaring Guitars. A
Top Debut.’ As well as all of this
we are going to give away 10
FREE TICKETS with TWO FREE
BEERS with each ticket.

Gregory Mead

In order to claim these free tickets with two free beers each all
you have to do is email music.
felix@ic.ac.uk asking for a free
ticket. We have 10 to give away.
So be quick since you only have
one day to get to it. You have
until 7pm today to get in touch.
Good luck and we hope to see
you there. Read the editorial
above for more info.

Help Wanted
We plan on bringing Femm
out every month otherwise the
name will just be a lie, which
will make baby Jesus cry. So we
really need your views, reviews,
features and interviews to keep
up the content.

You can contribute in any way.
If you would like to help with
design it would be much appreciated as currently only the
editor-in-chief does design and
occasionally needs to do his
degree. Please email music.
felix@ic.ac.uk if you want to
help. Or just come down to the
Felix office in the West Wing of
Beit Quad.

bitrate

Music is so vital to many people’s lives and it is generally
something that everyone has
an interest in or opinion on.
In order that we represent our
audience and produce quality
journalism.

Are you bored of constantly listening to music you hate on the radio? Or maybe you like
listening to music but don’t have the time or
energy to actively search out new bands that
you may like the sound of? Tired of listening to lame recommendations of crap bands
from your friends? Probably. I could go on
all night with the rhetorical questions, but
that’s not the point, the point is they don’t
matter. There’s no need to watch the pap
filled commercial shite music TV stations
any longer. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you smash up that radio churning out
mind numbing XFM ‘alternative’ crap and
get yourself over to Last.fm. (It’s a website
by the way).
For those of you who have been living underneath an internet music rock, helping
Rupert with the curse that it Myspace, or
even worse, iTunes; there is salvation for
you. Last.fm solves all the above problems
and more in one go. The idea of Last.fm is
simple, you install a plug-in into your iTunes/
media-player/whatever and it logs the music you listen to, the plug-in then sends this
log to your personal Last.fm page (similar
to a myspace page) and over time, it builds
up a profile on your listening habits. It even
works with iPods.
You can see all the music you’ve been playing since installing the plug-in. It also builds
charts showing your habits, tells you your
favourite stuff on a weekly basis and you can
check your overall top artists, top tracks,
and top albums as well as weekly top artists and top tracks. You can see what you’ve
listened to recently or even what you are
listening to right now! It makes you graphs,
tables, charts, album art mosaics, spinning
wheels of doom and yep, everything.

femm 2

This week we will be looking at the DIY
‘scene’ in London in the section that is funnily enough called The Scene. It will hopefully be a regular section unearthing new
movements, record labels or things of interest. We will also have a regular section
called Bitrate – which you can see below
this editorial. In this section we will have
someone (Gregory Mead if he has time) to
talk about some of the technological ways in
which music is presented. This week Greg
discusses the internet phenomenon that is
Last.fm; it is a clever music player plug-in
which compiles all the music you listen to,
thus deciding your personality.
Our other feature is a long overdue retrospective of three of the summer’s festivals;
Reading, Get Loaded in The Park and Escape Festivals with all three covering the
spectrum of how festivals could turn out.
What with no Glastonbury this year, the focus was obviously diverted to Reading and
yet it didn’t completely disappoint despite
an unimpressive line-up.
We always need contributors in the music
section of Felix and if you have any features
or you want to raise some issues then that
is what Femm is for. We always have plenty
of free CDs up for review and free gigs are
available to those who want them. Music
journalism is a tough business and this is a
great way to get into it if you ever wanted to.
All you need is enthusiasm.

To celebrate the launching of Femm the
Union has allowed us to put on a band as
part of a line up tonight (Friday 13th October) and called the night Felix Live. Popular act at the minute, Ross Copperman
(www.rosscopperman.co.uk) will be headlining around 11pm. There is another band
that is to be confirmed on before them and
at 9pm, the first band on will be The Sailplanes, a band we picked. They are from
London and are currently making a brilliant noise in the vein of Sonic Youth and
Sleater Kinney. It is free to get in before
9pm so turn up early to see The Sailplanes
(www.myspace.com/thesailplanes). It is £3
to get in after 9pm so I do strongly recommend turning up early.
We are also going to run a competition
so you can get FREE entry all night and
TWO FREE BEERS. We have ten free
tickets with two free beers for each ticket
to give away, all you have to do is email us
at music.felix@ic.ac.uk asking for a free
ticket. Nothing more, nothing less. Since
we go to press on the day of the gig, you
better be quick with the emails. See below
left for advertisement.
To get a free download of a Ross Copperman song text ROSS to 81330. He is signed
to Sony BMG and has gone down so well
at other universities that he has extended
his tour of them. Also, we at the music section will be DJing throughout the night!

‘But oh no!’ I hear you cry, ‘Now my elitist
musical friends will be able to see I’ve played
Britney Spears and S Club 7 on loop for 18
hours straight!’ Well, fear not, because the
lovely people who made the site even allow
you to delete any embarrassing entries from
record, so we can still pretend that our taste
in music is uber-tastically cool and hip.
Anyway, back to the problems I first outlined, I mean, who cares if I can see what
music I’ve listened to right? Surely I know
that anyway, and I can just tell my friends
it too, assuming they care. Well, luckily for
you, you ungrateful, demanding scamps, if
the amazing charts system still isn’t enough
to convince you to join, there are a plethora
of other functions, most based on the simple method called ‘tagging’ that the website
uses to categorise the bands. Basically, helpful users tell Last.fm what genre of music
they think a band is. It’s that simple. After
tens of thousands of users have told them
what they think an artist is like, be it indie,
hip hop, electronica or whatever, you can
pretty much be sure that the top ten genres
it lists for them (yes, a band can be classed
as more than one genre don’t you know) are
going to be correct, the huge number of ‘taggers’ makes any silly prankster who might
categorise your favourite Coldplay track as
death-grindcore totally insignificant.
So, in theory this means no more blanket
terms that cover 23,784,276 different artists
to describe a band you like. If you listen to
post-hardcore-glitch-techno-electro-grime
cut with cartoon soundtracks played through
a vocoder and 8 different effects filters, then
this is what it’ll be categorised as. Not ‘alter-

native music’ or ‘shit’.
Well great, now that my favourite bands
are correctly categorised, big deal, so
what? Well I ask, do you possess all knowing knowledge of all similar bands? Do you
know every single artist who plays your
favourite genre? Can you tell me all the
artists who rap with a classical orchestra
in the background? No, I didn’t think so.
I’m the only person who can do that, but
anyway, this system allows Last.fm to recommend similar artists to you, which you
can then go out and buy after checking the
free sample tracks they provide, and deciding if you like them. This also forms the
basis of their online radio station, which
only plays (theoretically) music that you’ll
enjoy, even if you’ve never heard it before.
Not only does it recommend similar
artists to you, but it even tells you other
users (known as ‘neighbours’) who have
the same music tastes as you do; you can
then add these users as friends just like
on Myspace. So now you can chat to your
heart’s content with people with the same
music taste as you and you can impress
them with your superior knowledge of all
things musical; basically anything you can
possibly imagine.
Finally, for those money grabbing cheapskates out there, grabbing their purse
strings shouting, ‘How much? How much?
How much?’ Don’t worry, it’s all free and
there is no spyware or adverts in sight, infact for all you computer science students
out there, it’s even open source so you can
modify it to your hearts content. By the
way, I don’t work for them.

Last.fm user weekly top artists.

reviews

Friday 13 October 2006

album

Four Tet
Remixes
(Domino)
HHHHI
Kieran Hebden (the sole member of Four
Tet) is seen by many as a pioneer and yet
not many (outside of muso circles) have
heard his music. Those who do know about
him have developed a platonic love for his
music. If I very rarely DJ at anything I often
put on Smile Around The Face and whilst
many will dance to it they are still baffled by
it, and pretty much every time someone will
accost me and ask, ‘What the hell is this?’
Whether this is a good reaction or not, I’ll let
you decide.
However, the first time I heard Pause (his
first album) I pretty much had the same response as the inquisitive soul above. There
is something unique about hearing Four Tet
for the first time.
There is also something unique about

Four Tet
Plastic People, Old Street

live

3 femm

Nowadays you can’t buy anything for six
quid. For example, that is just enough to
cover two trips on the tube, or a large McDonald’s meal and not even two gallons of
diesel. So naturally I was well chuffed to
have only paid six of the Queen’s finest to
see Four Tet last night (October 4th).
For those not in the know, Kieran Hebden
aka Four Tet is a master of electronic music, a well spoken middle class guy sporting
jewfro and crafting some of the most beautiful songs ever. His second album, Rounds,
is a must have for any record collection. I
was quite excited about seeing him live, not
only because I am a pretty big fan, but also
the gig was at Plastic People, a hole in the
ground cum club just of Old Street.
Arriving at doors open we found that in
fact they weren’t open, so we looked to Cargo just around the corner for some sneaky
refreshments. Returning half-an-hour later
there was a small rabble milling around the
metal grill of a door that was the entrance.
While we waited a young guy came out of the
Vietnamese restaurant next door, and pops
in the club past the bouncer before suddenly reappearing. It turns out it is Kieran
himself. How cool, he does it a couple more
times with excited whispers going around
the expectant fans every time, until we are
allowed to filter into the club itself.
Once inside he reappears, this time with a
JD and chatting to the crowd, to start with it
was kind of surreal but as time went by and
the dubious fat-guy-from-Hot-Chip-look-alike DJing played more and more obscure
tracks I came to appreciate how great the
atmosphere was. People weren’t mauling
him and he wasn’t being a pompous tit;
there was just a great vibe. Now let’s talk
about the set, and oh what a set, brandishing two laptops and creating complete sonic
mayhem, Keiran crafted a symphony of out
of each track, moulding them from a mix of
chirps, beeps and feedback.
Classics such as Smile Around the Face
were recreated in the most original ways
live and unlike many electronic artists it
turned out to be a real performance and not
a case of just pressing play. With Hands finishing a set that also covered Spirit Fingers
and A Joy, along with almost everything
else he has done in one guise or another, it
couldn’t have been a better set or more intimate setting. With a wave and a thank you
he went into the ‘back-stage’ area, basically
an alcove behind were he performed and
check his phone, like a real person. I can’t

Hebden, he has used his position of remote
popularity to dedicated people to promote
music as much as he can. He has been involved numerous times with the promoters
Eat Your Own Ears and the exposure of
countless brilliant acts.
Kieran Hebden has also recently collaborated with legendary free-jazz drummer
Steve Reid. It was a collaboration that somehow made a lot of sense since Hebden has
shown glimpses of his free-jazz-loving-side
in his live shows and on longer tracks on
his albums. So it comes as no surprise that
the first track on Remixes is a remix of Tics
by Lars Horntveth. It sounds similar to the
Hebden/Reid collaboration and is delightful to hear organic laptop manipulation, as
I didn’t know it was possible to use a laptop
and sound that organic.
To those not familiar with such obscurities (and to be fair, I wasn’t familiar until
I discovered this music through Four Tet
and others) the second track is a remix of
the Radiohead track Sktterbrain. One of the
more accessible remixes with a straight hip
hop beat and lots of reverb on Yorke’s vocals
makes the originally tedious and frankly,
whiny song more emotionally powerful.
For hip hop fans, the remixes of two Madvillain songs; Money Folder and Great Day
add a refreshing approach to the genre. The
attention to detail in the samples is what
made hip hop so great in the first place and

Four Tet’s approach shows a lot of respect.
Money Folder is also brilliant to put on and
nod your head like all good gangsters.
The remix of Carmella, originally by
Beth Orton has a big Phil Spector beat and
sounds like it could’ve come out of TamlaMotown. The diversity of sounds in all the
tracks is what is brilliant and displays all
sides to Four Tet’s musical appreciation.
Hebden doesn’t just handle more obscure
material, he also reworks So Here We Are
by Bloc Party and puts an emphasis on
the jazzy ride cymbal. He also manages to
produce the wall of sound that should’ve
been on the original by playing the main
riff forwards and then backwards. The
remixer makes a point of holding off the
drums and creating a building tension until the drums erupt at the end in a perfect
climax. It’s all rather coital.
Remixes is a 2 disc package and the second disc is called Remixed and as you can
guess, it consists of many artists remixing
Four Tet songs. The opening track features Percee P on MC duties and makes
the original sound all the darker and more
driven. It must be incredibly difficult to
remix a Four Tet track since there is so
much going on; you’d be afraid to lose
something in the remix. But even tracks
like the boring No More Mosquitoes get a
brilliant reworking.
Matty Hoban

describe how normal he was or how great it
felt to mingle with the artist before the show
but out of it all I think everyone in the audience now harbours ultimate respect for one
the most likeable guys in the industry.
Nick Simpson

with them.
Look out for Kick Me Out, Just Like We
Planned and The Only Girl I Want. Go
to their Myspace page; www.myspace.
com/mypictureband.
David Ellis

Private View
The Comedy, Leicester Square

How’s My Pop
The Gregson Centre, Lancaster

On a cold September night traffic is heavy,
lights glisten off the gleaming wet bus lanes.
Overhead the vast expanse of Piccadilly Circus neon signs shine down on the countless
faces below. Some are tourists, some are in
suits, some are freshers exploring their new
surroundings, and some are on their way to
see Private View, the recently re-named Indie Rock trio of Goldsmiths fame.
The venue’s stairs lead down to a cramped
basement with stocky walls. The diminutive
man at the door has all the fans fooled. This
guy has the power to book bands for the
Metro Club on Oxford Street. Most think
he’s just another landlord who plays host to
wannabe rock stars or anyone who’s willing
to make a stand and entertain the masses.
Look how wrong you can be. The bands tonight are uncommonly good for a pub event.
The Neon Eyes keep the growing crowd lucid in the tightly packed venue, people forget themselves and the shrinking room that
slowly encases them. Then its time for Private View.
Things start happening. As the band set
up on stage the tall, elegant figure of Charlotte Cray graces the stage. The band’s a
trio but there’s an extra mic set up. An impromptu alteration makes the trio a quartet.
The expectation grows as final preparations take place. An unintelligible mumble
comes from the stage and then, it happens.
It comes from out of nowhere. One minute
quiet expectation, the next everyone in the
room has the sense knocked out of their
bodies. It’s like a bomb just hit in a perfectly
executed, synchronous assault on the mind,
the stomach and every sense in the body.
Using lucid phrasing on the guitar and well
weighted lyrics Cray turns this immense
power into a strangely uplifting blaster of a
rock song.
The bassist, Chris Sharples has gone nuts.
NME’s best description of the man is ‘on
the cusp of genius and insanity’. You can
tell why, he’s everywhere. Any more inspiration and this lot would be a jumbled mess
of indistinguishable genius, This experience
was augemented by Miss Cray’s backing vocals, whether she’ll stay in the band I don’t
know, but I hear she has been in the studio

A packed room full of ebullient teenagers
from Lancaster’s Indie scene sporting
outsized necklaces, big glasses and stripy
knee high socks, cigarette smoke wafting
into the rafters and a ripple of excitement
as Hows My Pop come onto the stage. The
drum beat of the hugely popular Laura
Laura kicks in and the audience go mad.
‘Laura Laura are you gonna get home
tonight?’ they scream at Andy Raven, the
charismatic lead vocalist. It’s like we’ve
all been injected with an amazing concoction of Pro-Plus and Lucozade.
We all know a Laura. Drinks alcopops to
get smashed, tears up a club dancefloor
and passes out into taxi cab. This is one
of the band’s biggest strengths. They sing
like they mean it, and make us believe it.
I came here not knowing anything about
the band but a murmur of hype and I’m
loving it. The atmosphere is electric with
girls throwing themselves at the stage
and singers stage-diving off.
The best song for me though, is the
perky Turn off your Television (Turn on
your brain) with its insanely catchy guitar
chords and cleverly written lyrics. A cross
between Razorlight and The Ordinary
Boys with an electro twist, meet pop-rock
group Hows My Pop. Comprising Tom
Diffenthal mastering the keyboard and
synth, Chris Macneil on the drumset and
Matt Canty strumming the bass. Citing
Bob Dylan and The Jam as their influences they joined their musical talents alongside Raven whilst studying at college and
now are gigging with a full set of massive
dirty guitar chords, plinky Northern notes
and a huge amount of enthusiasm.
If you like your rock and indie, I definitely recommend checking this band out.
They’re rocking out venues all around
the North and hopefully will be coming
down here too. They usually have CDs at
gigs too for less than a fiver, so it might
be worth digging out those coppers and
taking one home. Try www.myspace.com/
howsmypop for a taster. The band are
awesome live and deserve to be signed to
a label. Snap them up while you can!
Priya Garg

feature

Friday 13 October 2006

femm 4

Doing It Yourself

O

bvious
furniture
and Ikea jokes
aside, doing it yourself or DIY in music encompasses
an ethical code and
outlook as opposed
to an actual sound.
Back in the day – I’m not sure which day
it was, let’s say Monday – the idea of a
music business was new, and then before
you knew it, it was the 1970s. This decade
saw the arrival of supergroups, prog-rock
and so many other evils that Jehovah’s
Witnesses were practically foaming at the
mouth at the thought of the rapture finally
arriving. What the people needed was music to get back to its grassroots after a period of time consisting of saxophone and
guitar solos. As many know, punk was the
inevitable reaction to the corporate face of
stadium rock, and along with the back to
basics approach to music that was punk
came the ethics of DIY. Record labels such
as Factory were more than a label; they
were an ideology. Record shops such as
Rough Trade popped up in 1976 and sells
records by more obscure acts focussing
on creativity rather than accessibility and
remaining firmly independent.
The decade of excess and privatisation
that was the 80s brought a refinement of
music and it was inspired by punk and it
was called New Wave. Music was heading in the right direction but these bands
quickly went to selling out stadiums and
thus formed the cleverly-titled No Wave
scene in New York. The music varied from
angular atonal noise to noise attached to
classic punk beats a la Sonic Youth. DIY
was never always about music and the
No Wave Cinema movement in New York
was influential on underground cinema
throwing up Jim Jarmusch and Steve
Buscemi amongst others. The central
idea is reject the accepted rules and to
take control of music by giving bands who
deserve exposure – but might not be that
accessible – and give them that exposure
without working for a profit. This is a major tenet of DIY, being not-for-profit and
pro-creativity.
So DIY had established itself as a way
to do things; put on gigs, put out records
and make small magazines all celebrating
a love for music and not money. There are
a lot more to the ideas and ethics behind
it and has a long and interesting history
with many great bands. It is not the only
way to do things, nor is the right way to
a lot of people. To more modern and local things, there are many people in London putting on gigs with a wide variety of
bands/artists/acts. One of these people is
Christopher Tipton who founded Upset
The Rhythm; they put out records and
put on shows with bands predominantly

from the US. He is also an Imperial alumnus
(he studied Biology) and was President of
the Alternative Music Society – a highly-esteemed position that this journalist held. He
took the time out of organising Frieze Music
2006 – on tonight and tomorrow (13th and
14th October) featuring Sunn O))), Burning
Star Core, Liars and Erase Errata – to express his views on what he thinks DIY is all
about.
There is no real one way of going about doing things yourself as it obviously varies with
the person who is doing it, and not everyone
shares the same beliefs. This comes across
when Chris says, ‘I don’t really believe in
the DIY aesthetic if this means something
is defiantly amateur. Things have moved on
since the early nineties. As much as I love
K records (independent label based around
Olympia, Washington) etc, this isn’t the only
model of DIY available to us.’ One problem
with DIY is that not many people are aware
of it. This breeds a certain snobbery and
‘There are a lot of people out there who use
obscure music and the concept of DIY to be
cool but it shouldn’t be about elitism. It’s not
cool by virtue of the fact that barely anyone
knows about it.’
Upset the Rhythm started, ‘Because bands
I loved were having a bad time in the UK,
were playing bad shows, were poorly paid
and some were even avoiding the UK on
their touring schedules to Europe, because
of the costs and the hassle. I knew there was
an audience for these artists and couldn’t
believe someone else wasn’t doing something. So I did it myself.’ Many other promoters (such as Damn You! in Nottingham)
took this affirmative action in relation to
overseas bands. Chris and the rest of Upset
the Rhythm started by working everything
out for themselves as they didn’t know many
promoters when they started or how they
worked. However he did ‘…have an immense
amount of respect for Tony Green from Rare
Pleasures. He used to do a lot of shows in
London and his heart is in the right place.’
Chris continues that, ‘I used to see him at
shows, handing out flyers for his own shows
that he had made himself and he would talk
to you about the upcoming shows, what they
would be like. This enthusiasm and attention
to detail inspired me. As a result I don’t hire
flyerers and do it myself or with other Upset
the Rhythm members.’ One of the focuses of
DIY has been to establish a community that
results in a dedicated audience for bands
and ‘They are the lifeblood.’
There are other promoters in London
who work in a DIY way and are doing similar things. There is Miles of Smiles put on
bands who vary from avant-rock in the form
of Enablers to elegant folk in the form of Viking Moses. The bands tend to be from the
US and abroad with local bands supporting.
There is also Undereducated and Unluck
who respectively cover alternative-indie-

MATTY HOBAN

Thanks to the internet (amongst
other things) it is now easier to find
bands, have them play at a show
or put out a record by them. This
way of taking control away from
the established music business has
been around for ages. What is it all
about? By Matty Hoban.

One of the pillars in the Notting Hill Rough Trade displaying posters for shows, you
can display these posters for free and they even give you a staple gun
noise and post-rock-noise bands. All this
talk of noise is not to deter you, those who
make noise in a pretensious way aim to challenge the listener and those use it as a way
to heighten the music. Also of note are Silver
Rocket who put on brilliant gigs of heavyrock bands from home and abroad with a
brilliant dancing session afterwards.
One thing you may have heard of as well
is the festival called All Tomorrow’s Parties. This is an independent festival hosted
in holiday camps in Camber Sands and now
Dorset. It started off with Barry Hogan
– suspiciously similar-looking to my name
– wanting to get bands over from the US to
curate or hand-pick the bands that will play
at the festival. The bands or people that curated brought over many brilliant bands and
the next festival is in early December and
Thurston Moore is curating, expect some
avant-garde legends to be playing. All Tomorrow’s Parties also put on gigs in London
with people such as Ennio Morricon, Calexico and Isis taking part.
However in regards to a scene Chris Tipton
thinks that, ‘There isn't really a scene per se.’

But ‘There are people doing similar things
and you see this when you book UK tours,
other people doing shows like yours who
really care. London is more fragmented
and driven by commercial promoters and
club nights, there is competition rather
than cooperation in the main. There are
a couple of promoters we have worked
with but relationships are casual.’ The
word scene is often associated with journalism to generalise what is happening. I
may come across as a hypocrite by calling
this section The Scene and you’d be write,
I am a hyprocrite. But then so are all of us
and it is silly to suggest otherwise.
Instead of a scene there is more of an
ethic associated with DIY. This ethic can
be seen as anti-capitalist and I guess it is,
where capitalism stands for competition
and profiteering, the DIY ethic is about
helping each other out for mutual benefit
and if you happen to make money at the
end of the day, you put it back into your
enterprise or pay the bands more.
To get an insight into the ethics Chris offered up this, ‘Ethically, you have to be

conscious of the fact that most people you
deal with are doing this for their day job. It
is their life's work and you need to treat it
with the respect it deserves. In the UK in
particular, music is seen as a hobby or a
passing fad.’ This last point is very notworthy since magazines like the NME promote
new and up-and-coming bands. This creates
an atmosphere of disposability – although
ironically it seems these days that said publication seems to put the same bands on
the cover despite being about new music.
Great bands who keep going out of passion
for what they are doing without much recognition rely on passionate music fans who
share their vision. The nature of up-andcoming can be seen as redundant in a climate where albums and bands will always
remain classically brilliant.
You can find out more about the ethics on
various wesbites that I will provide below
also with links to the DIY promoters websites. I also recommend you go to record
shops where they put up gig posters on the
two pillars in Notting Hill. The Covent Garden Rough Trade has posters all over the
wall. You can also see posters in various
Music and Video Exchanges – Notting Hill
being one of the best for displaying posters.
There should also be flyers dotted around. I
recommend that you have a look around and
go to one of the gigs. They are usually very
cheap to get in and it is amazing that more
people don’t just take a risk sometimes.
Also in this article I mentioned quite a few
bands that might be a bit obscure. I hope
this doesn’t put you off and you investigate
as much as you can, not to sound patronising but you more than often get out what you
put in.
If you fancy putting on your own gigs or
putting out your own records then it is very
easy to do. In London though, because there
are lots of people doing their own thing you
should look to what you can provide that is
different from all the others. This may sound
obvious but you want to cultivate an audience and it’s good for people to know where
to go for a certain genre or what to expect.
Another point raised by from Chris is, ‘If you
know there is an artist you want to see and
they haven't got a show in your town, put the
show on yourself. It is a lot easier than you
might think. If you want to see them there
is a likelihood other people will want to as
well.’ Also small DIY promoters tend to be
friendly, passionate and enthusiastic about
music so if you want to start out then I’m
sure they’d be happy to help you.
Now to more local things. This may be
shameless self-promotion but you can get
involved in putting on gigs through the Alternative Music Society at Imperial. I am responsible for organising the gig night Kids
Will Be Skeletons and we bring in many
bands from all over the country and occasionally abroad. It is a great way to get involved with music through the practical runnings of promoting bands and gigs. We work
for a DIY ethic by making the entry cost for
the audience as cheap as possible so that all
the money goes to covering the transport
costs for the bands. A lot of bands who play
at these shows tend to want only basic costs
covered such as transport. If you would like
to get involved then tell the society. There is
a poster for the next gig night on the back
of Femm.
Another DIY legacy is the zine, this is a
small magazine of reviews and features that
talks about small bands usually and you’ll
find many music zines on the internet. The
idea of the zine has been around for a long
time starting with black and white A4 typewritten sheets. With the internet it has become easier to spread the word with online
zines.
I could devote a whole article to zines
– and I probably will – but part of the music section at Felix are involved with www.
TheMusicZine.com. This website along with
many small zines is run by voluntary contributions so if you’d like to contribute then get
in touch.
I hope this article has given you an insight
into what DIY is all about. Like I’ve said,
it varies from person to person but what it
means to most people can be summarised in
Chris Tipton’s words: ‘DIY is a state of mind
and a declaration of intent.’

MATTY HOBAN

Friday 13 October 2006

the scene

5 femm

The aftermath of a XBXRX at Upset The Rhythm (top) and the other pillar in the
Notting Hill Rough Trade (bottom)

his year was my ninth
consecutive
hurrah
at Reading Festival. I
think I decided at about
my fifth year I was
determined to make
it ten in-a-row, and
fingers crossed there
doesn’t seem to have been much that has
stood in my way or as yet stands in my
way of making it - festival apathy due to
the increasingly downhill line-ups, aside.
In fact, the festival is such an old haunt of
mine that in order to do this year’s festival justice for the purpose of this review
I shall attempt to imagine the experience
through the eyes of a festival newbie. This
won’t be that easy. But then considering I
spent most of the festival in a drink and
smoke filled haze of insanity, I don’t think
it will be so hard either.
I shall begin my review at the festival
Main Gate on Friday at about 1pm.(Yes,
yes a bit late for a ‘first timer’ I know but
after almost a decade I don’t need the
extra days in a tent to warm up to it all.)
Here goes nothing. After the weeks of saving up and then waiting for the ticket to
arrive and then feeling it in my grubby
hands and all the mental planning and
sleepless nights of excitement, Reading
Festival here I come! It’s just like I always
imagined. Only with more strange smells.
So many people, so many, many people,
some strange looking and some just like
me. Everybody was herded like ants or
weird Amazonian, brightly-coloured flies
in the same direction, generally carrying
at least twice their body weight in either
booze or other such related paraphernalia destined to help them survive the next
three days.
We proceed to march confidently
through the gates of fire, past the people
trying to get a ticket and the touts trying to
sell you one, past the people handing out
leaflets on Christianity and how to avoid
the lure of the devil. Then past the yellow
day-glow jacket wearing arena staff wafting the crowds this way and that and along
the long dusty dirt road into the camping
area. WOAH! No, that’s not my reaction to
the sheer size of this small city in a field,
comprised mainly of balloon-like coloured
pebbles, that is the cry of one caught in a
breeze of portaloo stench and it’s only Friday. Wahey!
Undeterred and our tent up, we’re ready
to grab a piece of the action. First up on our
list of bands to see is Belle and Sebastian.
We fight our way through the masses to a
quiet pocket to the front-right of the Main
Stage crowd and with only part of my view
blocked, braced ourselves to begin jumping around like happy indie sweethearts
to all our favourite suicidal lullabies. Although the band certainly do have bags of
sing-a-long shoegazing melodies in their
repertoire, I didn’t feel this late afternoon
slot on the largest stag did them justice.
Everything sounded a bit same-y to me,
even for them, and I felt watching them
was more of a nostalgic exercise than a
satisfying musical moment.
The Mystery Jets however, were re-

ally tight and definitely on form. I saw them
open the Carling Tent last year and it is really great to see how their fanbase has blossomed and how much confidence they have
gained. They played some of the stuff off the
new album and it was a pleasure to see it all
working with their usual style. Definitely a
band to catch now while you still can get to
see them in a venue you won’t get lost in.
To be honest I felt like the days highlight’s
were going to be The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The
Vines and Primal Scream, and I certainly
wasn’t disappointed. Apart from one of our
crew having a major white out during Maps,
I couldn’t have asked for my experience to
be more rockingly festival-tastic. Uninspired
by the line-up we had all been a bit liberal
with our alcohol intake and I’m pretty sure
it was during our early evening sing-a-longs
while linking arms and fisting the air, that I
remember vaguely remarking to myself that
this was starting to seem like the bona fide
time I had been promised.
The crowd lapped up the YYYs, the majority of which were made up of 16-19yr olds
suitably and impeccably dressed and accessorized. The band played like they had been
waiting all year for this slot and they were
the perfect prelude to the rest of the weekend, if only there had been something a bit
less of a letdown than The Chiefs to follow
their stomping footsteps. In my personal
opinion the Chiefs are the most overrated
thing since Hovis started mixing flour, yeast
and water, and to be honest looking at the
waning size of the crowd at the Main stage,
I’m probably not alone in my thinking.
Whether you love or hate Craig Nichols,
The Vines are a band who are very good
at what they do, and the atmosphere in the
tent was forgiving as well as vibrantly loyal.
They may have been off the map for a while
but the first 15 rows of the Radio One tent at
least knew all the songs and sung to nearly
every chorus. A long time coming perhaps,
but the steady fanbase and sophistication of
the band live prove they obviously haven’t
been resting on their laurels.
Saturday’s highlights will be easy for me
to recount seeing as for me there were only
about a handful of bands I wanted to see.
Main Stage headliners Muse, of course, because it seems no matter how many times
you see this band there will always be something dramatic, fresh and untamed about
their performances. With a huge selection of
work to get through they picked a varied but
mostly Hullaballoo-era set and the crowd
loved it.
Sunday was all about the dance tent and
the lead up to headliners Soulwax’s Niteversions set of 2 Many DJs and Vitalic was
just about enough to send us into orgasmic
overload. Sadly, the Vitalic set wasn’t all
I had dreamt of it being and although the
temperature and atmosphere inside the
tent was rising fast, the sweat from dancing
mixed with jets of cold water sprayed by the
security at the front gave it an Alton Towers
twist I wasn’t so sure I enjoyed. For our finale, 2 Many DJs were greeted with the kind
of screaming appreciation that an internationally revered live dance act could expect
and they gave us back exactly what we were
after. In short, they rocked!

ALL PHOTOS BY GREG MEAD

Checking out festivals large and small this summer,
Reading fares well in 2006, dispite a less than
average line-up. Get Loaded In The Park fails to
impress and Escape Festival impresses all. Honey
Monroe, Nick Simpson, Simon Haywood and
Gregory Mead all share their experiences.

From top to bottom; Main Stage, Festival desperation, Vitalic and finally Muse

7 femm

Friday 13 October 2006

festivals

When you are young, summer is
glorious; six weeks of holidays
to play about in the sun, maybe
even go to Butlin’s or the beach;
a time of innocence. Then you
get older and instead of basking in the sun or day-tripping to
natural wonders such as Cheddar Gorge you prefer to stand in
the rain in a muddy field all bank
holiday weekend, while camping
in a bog next door, justifying the
whole affair by calling it the ‘festival experience’. Admittedly festivals are very cool, wonders such
as T in the Park and Leeds consistently have excellent line-ups
ready to entertain you all day and
night. But in recent years there
has been a rash of new festivals
cropping up all over the place and
one such festival is Get Loaded in
the Park, part of the Metro Weekender (yes, that’s a festival ran by
a free newspaper). Running on
the Sunday of August bank holiday it follows on from South West
4, a ‘dance’ festival on the Saturday, aptly named after the local
postcode.
This festival is a bit of an oddity, located on Clapham Common
there is no camping over the
weekend, not that any one would
want to anyway since both days
lie at different extremes of music taste. Because there are no
campers so there is no feeling of
continuity across the event and
none of that happy go lucky atmosphere that permeates every
facet of Glastonbury.
Turning up an hour after the
event started, the site was dead.
I saw more press photographers
than bona fide audience members
although some did have mighty
fine cameras. But festivals are
about the music I hear you cry, so
lets talk about the line-up. It was
all very generic; Lilly Allen, Babyshambles, the Buzzcocks, James
Lavelle and the list goes on. The
artists were all of a certain quality and I was mildly excited about
the whole thing, they even had 65
Days of Static and Vitalic playing
tent sets. Adam Freeland and
Juice Alheem was one act I was
certainly looking forward to and
as soon as I arrived I bought an
over-priced programme (like V,
the only way of knowing what is
on is paying through the nose for
some laminated cardboard). To
my horror the genius organisers had decided to put one of the
most talented acts on the main
stage at 12 noon, i.e. playing to a
plastic bag and about ten thousand fag butts trodden into mud.
Disappointed and heart broken I wandered about, avoiding the Cuban Brothers on the
Main Stage and looking in empty
tents until I got so bored I went
to Sainsbury’s. Then a sandwich
and a McDonalds later (plus a
free Coca Cola glass!)
I returned to the ‘arena’ for
more fun and games. Vitalic
played a reasonable set but it was
mid-afternoon and the mood was
none existent. Perhaps it was
just not a good day for electro, so
I went over to see 65 Days of Static. On arrival some gypsies were
on the stage and playing in the
slot for 65DoS. On closer inspection they turned out to be a band,
not gypsies and were covering
the gap in the schedule where 65
had dropped out! Could it get any
worse? Not really, I studied the
programme some more and sat
down to read the Sunday Times
for a good 30 minutes, basking in

ALL PHOTOS BYGREG MEAD

Get Loaded in
The Park

Escape Festival (Clockwise from top-left); Random dude, Erol Alkan and crowd for Pendulum; Babyshambles at GLITP (below)
the sun like the the good old days.
Finally, I gave up. The last act was on at
8pm, presumably because none of the residents living around the park would want
rock blaring from the common at 11pm, the
time was currently 5pm and there was no
way I was going to hang around for another
3 hours for the gamble of Babyshambles actually turning up at all, so I caught the 345
home and had a Nesquik.
I think I maybe being a little harsh to the
whole event, if you do like Lilly Allen and the
in your face style of comedy which had its
own tent all day, or in fact the feel good indie bands and general off centre alternative
pop then Get Loaded in the Park is for you.
Otherwise I recommend going to a more established event.

Escape Festival
Swansea
For those of you who don’t know, it’s a one
day dance festival organised by Godskitchen, and pretty damn sweet it is. Running for
its 7th year in a row, the place was packed
out and considering the line-up, it’s not
surprising. It’s not every day that so many
world class acts turn up in Swansea. Only
once a year and we were there.
The festival being in Wales, and us being in
London unfortunately resulted in us starting our mission at the obscenely early hour
of 9am. Setting off from Euston station, with
only a bottle of vodka to keep us company,
we gradually watched the train fill up with
more and more festival goers, all wearing
sunglasses and most of them babbling in
some form of incoherent Welsh accent, but
that didn’t matter, it was great fun. 3 hours
later and we were there.
The first thing that struck me about the
site on arrival was how full of people it was
already, after only being open for 2 hours,
obviously it was pretty popular with the locals. The second thing that struck me was
the temperature; it felt like my face was
about to evaporate whilst my skin caught
fire. Perfect conditions to dance in for 8
hours straight!
The acts we were planning on seeing
didn’t come on until in early evening, so we
explored the site. The site is basically on a
huge hill with two fields in it, with the Radio
1 Stage at the bottom of one and the Godskitchen Stage at the bottom of the other
with Raveology and Urban Arenas in covered tents half way down, and random attractions dotted around the place.
With 4 or 5 beers in me it was about time
to check the place out. We caught the end
of Akira The Don on the Urban stage which
was great, despite the crazy heat in the tent,
the lead singer kitted out in orange jump
suit with orange goggles to match. They also
had the honour of being the only act with a
guitar at the festival.
Getting more into the party mood when
Tall Paul came on, we felt more compelled to

join the ranks of the dancing. We finally did
when Marco V hit the stage and began to
blare out some beats that we couldn’t resist, everyone was enjoying every minute.
Yet our time at the Radio One Stage was
soon to end, for the Raveology Arena was
calling us. The late afternoon sun brought
with it the start of a packed night of raving, the time for some Drum ‘n’ Bass was
upon us.
The Raveology arena was a slight surprise but mostly a good one. It wasn’t quite
as full as I expected, yet it meant like all
the other stages you could freely get right
to the front and have room to dance. In effect it had exactly the right amount of people to give it the atmosphere needed and
not feel claustrophobic. We were there
to catch the beginning of Pendulum, one
of the acts at the top of my list and they
didn’t disappoint.
The final plan for the evening was to
catch the end of Erol Alkan’s set, even
though we see him every week at Trash,
his set was largely more electro in style
(predictably) and followed on perfectly to
Mylo where we could catch the last of the
summer sun whilst enjoying some relaxed
and funky beats. This truly was one of my
personal highlights, as again we strolled
right to front of the crowd to join the masses. The sun, sound and setting were perfect for that point in the evening and I’m
sure all those in attendance would agree.
We then caught the end of Armin Van
Buuren, Groovrider and Fabio, and the
rest of the night till close was lasers, bass
and air horns galore, what else can I say?
Not much. I was enjoying myself too much
at this point to note anything more.
All good things come to end. With most
people having vacated the site by midnight
in a manner that has been applauded by
the police, which is a credit to everyone.
So off it was to buses, taxis and the like,
with many heading back to hotels. Or for
those like me who forgot to book one, it
was off to a club to continue the party until 4am, before strolling the cold streets of
Swansea waiting for the first trains.

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

ARTS

21

arts.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Jewels in the Serpentine
Tony Heywood’s embelleshed sculptures are giving a little sparkle to Hyde Park

Calling
all theatre
lovers
Emily Lines

SuperAlgal Bloom by Tony Heywood. On show next to the Serpentine Bridge in Hyde Park until the end of the month.
Emily Lines
Arts Editor
Something strange is growing in the
Serpentine, and it isn’t mould from
a tramp who fell in and drowned
last week. No, it’s sculptor Tony
Heywood’s newest piece, SuperAlgal Bloom.
Inspired by microscopic photography of phytoplankton and zooplankton, and by the blue and green
algal blooms that regularly appear

in the Serpentine, Heywood has
created a set of serenely colourful
pieces that dance gracefully on the
surface of the lake.
Catching your eye as you cross
the bridge, they glitter like crystals
in the sunshine, and reflect so perfectly that it’s hard to tell where the
bejewelled forms end and the lake
begins.
Despite being based on algae, the
forms are strangely reminiscent of
mutating watery forms. From glid-

ing swans to clam shells, they seem
perfectly in harmony with their
surroundings, and Heywood has
avoided the easy trap (so completely fallen into by Jim Lambie’s 2005
Turner work) of making sculpture
which is garish and tacky.
But the sculptor had a darker
motivation in this piece. He wants
to comment on the appearance of
mutant algae strains in reaction
to changing environmental conditions. Indeed, one can imagine in

the half-light of dusk that the sculptures would take on an eerie fairytale-like quality, gliding across the
lake like a deformed sea monster.
The sculptures will be there until the end of October. If you crave
respite from the pressures of university life and have an hour or
two to spare I highly recommend
that you take the time to wander
through Kensington Gardens (head
towards the Serpentine Gallery) to
see them.

If you know anything at all about
theatre and the performing arts,
you’ll probably have heard of the
Laurence Olivier awards. They
are by far the most prestigious
awards in Theatreland, and are
handed out each year to the most
exceptional theatre, dance and
opera productions.
Since 1976 the awards have
been given out in more than 20
different categories to the most
legendary and iconic performers to grace the London stage, as
well as the most impressive and
innovative productions.
What’s this got to do with me, I
hear you cry. Surely these highbrow cultural events are beyond
the influence of the theatre-going
public.
Not so, for each year the judging panel, as well as including the
cream of the theatre world, includes 14 members of the public.
There are eight available positions on the Theatre Panel, two
on the Opera Panel, two on the
Dance and two on the Affiliates
Panel.
If you are lucky enough to be selected you will spend 2007 going
to all the biggest and most exciting shows, and ultimately deciding who gets the awards.
Applications are now open, and
although a passion for the theatre
is a requirement, the positions
are open to any and all, regardless of age and profession.
To apply you’ll need to write a
150-word review of a production
you’ve seen recently and also
provide a list of every production you’ve seen in the last 12
months.
You can pick up an application
form at a West End theatre, or go
to their site, olivierawards.co.uk.

The cacophony of Piano/Forte WIN Noel, he’ll
make you Happy
Piano/Forte
Royal Court Theatre
Until Saturday, October 14

Usually, theatre reviews are intended to give the reader an idea of
whether a given play is worth going
to see. Once they have been given a
few hints as to the plot, the cast, and
the quality of the production, the
reader may be tempted into seeing
a play that they wouldn’t otherwise,
or to avoid a disgusting piece of selfconscious pretentiousness.
By those criteria, this review will
be almost utterly useless. Piano/
Forte finishes its month-long run on
Saturday, which is the day after this
edition of Felix will be published.
That gives you, dear reader, two
potential nights to buy tickets and
see this play. I urge you to sell your
dead grandmother’s gold teeth if
that’s what it takes to get seats for
Piano/Forte. You will not see such
a vivid, chaotic and furiously engaging stage production for quite some
time.
Terry Johnson, fresh from sending up the godfather of cinematic
suspense in Hitchcock Blonde,

writes (and directs) Piano/Forte
especially for its two leads: Kelly
Reilly (Pride & Prejudice, The Libertine) and Alicia Witt (Cybill, Vanilla Sky).
The opening scene shows Abigail
(Alicia Witt), a disturbed, agoraphobic, quiet (the Piano of the title) but
astoundingly gifted pianist (Alicia
Witt is a concert-standard pianist
and plays all of the music that is
heard onstage). She is alone in the
oak-panelled house in which she
was raised and now lives, looked
after by her mother’s Australian
brother Ray (Danny Webb).
This peaceful idyll is then utterly
destroyed by the return of her sister, Louise (Kelly Reilly), an equally
disturbed, angry, maniacal hellraiser (the eponymous Forte in the
title), whose only skill is causing
chaos. This prodigal homecoming
is precipitated by the impending
wedding of the girls’ father to a vacuous page 3 model. The marriage
symbolically coincides with the anniversary of their mother’s shotgun
suicide in the barn outside. When
the couple arrives, the heated verbal exchanges shift to a barrage of
vicious semi-accusatory barbs from

a topless Louise, ceasing only when
the father leaves the stage.
From this point onwards, the
movement turns into a chaotic crescendo, and to describe it would
do it no justice. We are then left to
pick over the obviously broken lives
onstage; a set of hurt and damaged
people, for whom normalcy is not
possible. Blame becomes irrelevant.
When the end comes, it does so in
a totally different kind crescendo,
and finishes in a gunshot. Abigail
is alone onstage, playing Ravel.
The beauty of the play lies in the
disturbed lives and minds of characters who have failed to move on
from the suicide of the person that
they all loved. The play becomes a
stunning study of the varying types
of insanity that trauma can engender, especially the martyrdom-obsessed and dysfunctionally furious
personality of Louise (Kelly Reilly
deserves a special mention for her
tempestuous portrayal) and the
quiet madness of Abigail.
Piano/Forte has a range like few
other plays, from the chaotic farce
to pathos, romance, vicious wit and
angry youth.
Andrew Somerville

OK, so he’s not going come into
your bedroom and sing the ‘Mr
Blobby’ song to banish your blues,
but if you’ve seen Noel Edmonds
recently on Deal or No Deal, you’ll
know he’s chirpier than ever (if
that’s possible). Well, it turns
out he’s started doing something
called cosmic ordering, which apparently changes your life and
gets you a slot on daytime TV and
into housewives’ hearts.
We at Felix are constantly worried about the effects of stress on
IC students, so we’ve teamed up
with Noel to offer one lucky endof-their-tether reader a signed
(yes SIGNED) copy of Noel’s new
self-help book, Positively Happy.
To win, just answer this simple
question: “What was the name of
Noel’s hit 1990s TV show?”Send
me your answer by Tuesday 5pm
to arts.felix@ic.ac.uk. Signed
photos for two runners-up to
drool over.

Noel when the BBC loved him

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

FILM

23

film.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Introducing ‘The Guardian’
Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Costner team up for an action-packed adventure.
Yuen Ai Lee
Film Editor
Kevin Costner returns to the silver
screen with The Guardian. Taking
the lead as Ben Randall, he is a legendary Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer and we join Ben at the scene
of his unravelling. At the height
of a massive storm, Ben Randall
loses his best friend and the rest of
his rescue crew when he attempts
to save a boat of shipwrecked
fishermen.
Sent on an unwanted sabbatical
to recuperate from the accident, he
is forced to teach a new batch of recruits who want to be Rescue Swimmers like himself. At ‘A School’,
the academy to train rescuers so
that others may live, Ben Randall
locks head with cocky swimming
champion
Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher).
Jake is a mystery by himself, he
is a swimming champion and he
has been offered scholarships to
Ivy League universities but he has
chosen to eat humble pie as a Rescue Swimmer. He proves to be the
strongest and the fastest among all
the recruits and yet he fails to obtain Ben’s approval until a bar fight
turns these rivals into comrades.
The Guardian is a story about the
unsung heroes from the U.S. Coast
Guard, which has been aptly described by Ashton Kutcher as one
of the few branches that the U.S.
Government trains only to save
lives, not take them. It must be

noted that the action scenes in the
storm benefited tremendously from
Andrew Davis’ meticulousness and
expertise in cinematography.
Unfortunately for The Guardian,
the story is largely predictable and
it is a strange mixture of Top Gun
and Ashton Kutcher’s famous comedic personality. The length of
the film was also a bit of a drag and
the cheesy ending left the audience
with a bitter aftertaste. However,
Jake Fischer’s confrontation with
Ben Randall was extremely realistic and demonstrated a side of Ashton Kutcher’s talents which have
not been immediately obvious in his
previous films.
Fortunately for Felix, we managed
to ask Ashton Kutcher his opinion
on the films he has made so far and
the kind of films he prefers to be in
henceforth.
Ashton: As a young actor, you
don’t have a lot of choices in the
beginning. However, now that my
choices have grown, I like to be in
movies with a story I like to tell. It
does not matter if it’s a romantic
comedy, horror or action film. It is
the story that matters.
Another interesting piece of news
is that the U.S Coast Guard set up a
recruiting booth at the official opening of The Guardian in Chicago.
It is rather inspirational to watch
people risking their lives to save
others. However, will it encourage you to do the same? You be
the judge when the film opens on
October 20.

At first glance, you might wonder
why Felix has dedicated its film
section to reviewing a pornographic film. Despite the title, there is
no sex at all in the film. Scenes Of
A Sexual Nature is a movie about
relationships, an interwoven net of
emotions of seven different couples
who were all spending a sunny afternoon in Hampstead Heath.
Andrew Lincoln stars as Jamie,
a middle-aged married man who
suddenly becomes transfixed with
a schoolgirl’s underwear. This turn
of events does not bode well with
his wife, Molly (Holly Aird) who had
just voiced her doubts about their
marriage. The brilliant aspect of
this scene is the indirect method
with which Molly expressed her
worries. Unfortunately true for the
rest of the world, some women can
be dreadful bush-beaters but not
all will be as ingenious as Molly to
mention it with the help of Cosmo.
Other notable couples in the
film include an elderly couple, Iris
(Eileen Atkins) and Eddie (Benjamin Whitrow). When visiting their
favourite viewpoint in Hampstead
Heath, they meet and discover they
were each other’s dream lover 40
years ago. Seizing the rare chance
of getting to know a stranger you
fell in love with, they spend an afternoon getting to know each other.
It is not always a good idea to meet
the person of your dreams. Funny
man, Noel (Tom Hardy) tries to chat
up Anna (Sophie Okonedo) who has

just been dumped by a commitment-phobic. Can someone please
get this guy a copy of Chatting Up
Girls For Dummies?
To some people’s dismay, Ewan
McGregor did not sing or dance in
this film. Instead of his usual cheeky
mischievous girl-chasing self, he is
trying a new sport i.e. boy-chasing.
It might be shocking to imagine how
trendy playing a gay character is in
the film industry. However, the biggest shock comes from how realistic and convincing Ewan McGregor
is as the promiscuous homosexual,
Billy. His life-partner, Brian (Douglas Hodge) is desperate to have
Billy all to himself. However, Billy
demands a high price for his commitment. He wants to adopt a baby.
Brian doesn’t want a baby but will
he compromise his own desires for
the sake of love? Not to be cynical,
but it isn’t even a blood agreement.
The film is interesting and it is a
light-hearted way to spend 93 minutes. However, the lack of change in
scenery does lend a slight monotonous disadvantage. While the script
is highly entertaining, it is a film
without a true conclusion. When
you watch this film, it feels like you
have just been given a strange intimate perspective of these seven
couples’ lives for an afternoon. Its
best advantage is it lacks the happily-ever-after and cheesy characteristic that usually defines a romantic
comedy. In this case, Scenes Of A
Sexual Nature’s uniqueness might
leave the audience semi-puzzled at
the end of the show.

With 6,000 people around the world we thought it would be good to start a big conversation,
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with it. The results have been spectacular, for our people, our clients, our business. Is any other
investment bank so inclusive, so connected? We doubt it.

Raising our voices
In the spirit of Southside… let us defeat Imperial apathy
João Vitor Serra
Environment Editor
During my first two years at Imperial, I became depressingly aware
of the Imperial College students’
apathy.
During anti-war campaigns we
went unnoticed in the hoards of
students who had travelled from
around the UK. At the Campaign
against Climate Change, five year
old children were clearly more
entertained, and entertaining,
throughout the march.
But worst of all, and this the
freshers should particularly look
down on us for, at the top-up fees
marches our Students’ Union took
no significant role in representing
the students and we ourselves never lifted a finger.
As a result of this apathy, places
like Southside have become mere
legends to most student. For those
who had the pleasure of experiencing the halls (and bar) you will never forget their intricate maze-like
design. It was possibly the easiest
building to get lost in, yet as a result
one of the most fun to walk into.
But Southside should teach us
all a good lesson. Imperial was not
always the dull quiet place that it
is today. It would probably shock
most of you to find that Southside
was designed to prevent riots.
Scarily enough, it would probably
shock the students who first lived

in Southside even more to find that
our generation did nothing more
than sign a petition when the halls
were knocked down and the bars
closed forever.

Be a little less
apathetic and
bring back the
Southside spirit
by sharing your
views.
As former Felix editor, Rupert
Neate, wrote on the subject “even
in my wildest imagination I cannot
think of any cause against which we
Imperial students would riot. Perhaps the library not being open 24
hours any more?!”
But I’m not here to complain
about our students, I’m here to encourage people to be a little more
like our predecessors: a little more
vocal. We are not a lost, but we
have to work a little harder at being
heard.
As many may already know last
year the Environmental Society organised the first ever Green Week.
With a large group of students concerned with the College’s disregard
for its own environmental responsi-

bilities, Green Week aimed to raise
awareness and asked the College
to committee to certain targets. As
a result, this is the first year that
students can find recycling in all
departments.
Others will also remember the
HIV/AIDS campaign Positively Red
Week organised by MedSIN, another student society. The week was
filled with workshops and lectures
and the students flaunted Red ribbons to show support for the cause.
In the coming year, this section
hopes to become an open arena for
discussing topics varying from global health to global warming and
from education to poverty.
Societies are welcome to write
about their events and campaigns,
the purpose of this section is for
you to have a means to communicate with students. Individuals are
equally welcome to speak their
minds or tell a story.
I encourage all students and staff
to be a little less apathetic than we
have recently been and bring back
the Southside spirit by raising their
voices and sharing your views. Who
knows, maybe some time in the future the College will have to rebuild
Southside so as to cage the beasts
that are Imperial students.
To find out more or to write for
this section, get in touch:
environment.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Medsin starts the year with
the Global Health Forum

Southside: initially built to contain riots, but now this legend merely
represents a time when students still had an opinion.

Did you
know?

■ Approx.

1.4 billion people
(around 1 in 4 people) do not
have access to clean water and
3 billion (1 in 2) live without
basic sanitation or electricity.

■ 49

of the least developed
nations have gained nothing
from the past decades econonic
boom and their living standards
are lower than 30 years ago.

■ The

UK consumes 12bn cans
every year – placed back-to-back
they would stretch to the Moon
and back!

■ More

Approximately 600 million people are at risk of contracting schistosomiasis becase they live in tropical
regions where water supply and sanitation are inadequate or non-existent.
Anenta Ratneswaren
Medsin Imperial
Medsin-Imperial is a group of students motivated to raise awareness
of humanitarian and health related
issues on a global and local level by
organizing projects and campaigns,
and we have been running for more
than 8 years!
Medsin is the UK branch of the
International Federation of Medical Students’ Association (IFMSA),
made up of local branches at all
the major medical schools in the
country.
At Medsin-Imperial, through our
campaigns covering issues such as
HIV/AIDS and sanitation, we raise
awareness and lobby for change.
We also run a wide range of handson projects throughout the year.
Learning sign language, teaching

CPR to children in schools, encouraging people to donate bone marrow or volunteering at orphanages
in the Balkans are just some of the
things you can get involved in, but
if that’s not enough, you could even
set up your own project.
Some of the many events and
activities we have planned for the
year include: Positively Red AIDS
Week, running from 26th November
to 1st December 2006, as well as the
new Global Health Forum, which
is a program of fortnightly Medsin
events aiming to stimulate interest
and promote awareness of important issues in international health
through diverse talks, debates and
films.
Our first event this year, held last
Tuesday was ‘The Vicious Cycle
of Worms’, a lecture given by Prof
Alan Fenwick OBE. Professor Fen-

wick is a leading expert in tropical
parasitology and the direct of the
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative.
We have also just launched a
new project called Sexpression,
enabling medical students to raise
awareness about sexual health issues both in local schools and within the university.
If you’re interested in any of our
projects or campaigns, or if you just
want to find out more about Medsin,
visit us at our ‘Medsin Explained’
event on Tuesday 17th October,
6.30pm. Room G34 and Room 120,
Medic Building, South Kensington
Campus.
Also, feel free to find out more
by visiting our website, www.union.ic.ac.uk/medic/medsin. Or you
can email Natalie and Ruvandhi
(our co-presidents) at imperial@
medsin.org.

than 300 million people
(approximately 50 times the
population of London) live on
US$1/day.

This month
Thursday, October 12
Launch Event 2006/2007
6.00pm Room 542 - Mech Eng
A fantastic opportunity to find
out more about Engineers
Without Borders (EWB) and how
it can be a stepping stone for a
career in international development. Hear about recent exciting
projects and placements from
around the world. Discover how
you can get involved. For more
information on the IC branch of
EWB, you can visit the website
at www.ewb-uk.org/imperial or
email joao.serra@imperial.ac.uk.

If you have any facts to share
you can contact us on environment.felix@imperial.ac.uk
Tuesday, October 17
Medsin Explained &
Fairtrade Cafe
6.30pm, G34, SAF
Tuesday, October 24
“Could stepping up the current
response to HIV do more harm
than good?”
6.30pm Biology LT - SAF
Discussing the need for a holistic treatment plan for all with
HIV. Dr Elinor Moore, MSF. Ms
Jennifer Swan, Newham Hospital NHS Trust. Nibbles provided.

lubs&Societies
C
Civil Engineers explore El Salvador
28

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

Repairing the earthquake of 2001 with an NGO in El Salvador; concrete, gangs, spiders and more concrete

I

n 2001 several large magnitude earthquakes shook
the small Central American Republic of El Salvador. The effects were
devastating on an already
struggling country where
civil war had ended less
than two decades earlier. In 2002,
students from Civil Engineering at
IC volunteered to work on a development project in one of the poorest communities. Since then, the
project has developed into a pioneering annual student-community
participation scheme working with
a local Non Government Organisation (NGO).
The volunteering projects, working with the Salvadorian NGO,
REDES, involve students from several universities and disciplines.
Students travel to El Salvador and
work with the community for five
to seven weeks on various development projects.
Over the past five years the
projects have included a seismically resistant adobe pre-school, concrete block model house, construction of pit and compost latrines,
construction of drainage pits, retaining walls, steel frame houses
and various social welfare projects.
This year’s team, comprising of
11 students of the Civil Engineering Department (first year to PhD)
and two architecture students from
UCL, travelled to El Salvador to
work on four separate projects. The
project was completely organised
by the students and funding gained
from industrial sponsorship. Once
again, it was in conjunction with
REDES but also included other
NGOs in keeping with the group’s
hope to expand. These projects included the expansion of a school
and nursery in Santa Marta, a radio
station in Victoria and a compost latrine project in Pepto, Gualcimaca.

A bit about the
projects
The projects in Santa Marta include
the construction of more classrooms in their local high school
and nursery - over time we came
to know these as the Escuela and
la Guarderia. As many of the older
generation were lost to the war,
Santa Marta is a fairly a youthful
village being largely populated by
people under 20. Thus the school is
important in bringing together and
strengthening the community.
Outside of Santa Marta, in the
closest town, our other project in
Victoria required us to build a new
radio station. The objective was to
help the community rebuild their
radio station, a valuable cornerstone to the surrounding isolated
villages like Santa Marta. It provides information about the outside
world such as current affairs, public services and announcements
that are free from government censorship. A new and larger station
would provide extra room for more
volunteers to work and large areas to hold seminars and education
programs for the local people.

Our fourth project brought us
with CIRES (a different NGO) to a
remote settlement called Pepeto
North East of Chalatenango. It
could only be reached on foot or in
a 4x4 on a good day meaning transportation of building materials was
tricky. CIRES, unlike REDES, concern themselves with medical aid
and they are not engineers. Their
projects mainly raise health awareness and supply aid to places which
have no free government care due
to inaccessibility.
Our aim was to build five compost
latrines to improve health thereby
reduce disease and illness such as
diarrhoea, vomiting, headaches
and dizziness.
The extent to which the community was deprived meant that sanitary facilities were very limited and
we had to walk for ten minutes to
get a wash.
This village had little in the way
of hygiene and sanitation, consequently providing compost latrines
is a big step forwards. Unlike the
projects at Santa Marta and Victoria where we had a Maestro, here,
we were given full flexibility for the
engineering of the latrines. The
concrete mix, the foundation size
and the mortar and blocking of the
latrines were all coordinated by
ourselves.

Next year’s group
There is great potential for future
years. This year’s group had managed to establish and strengthened
more ties with local NGO’s and new
communities in El Salvador.
The various projects in conjunction
with ADES, CIRES and REDES for
2007 could include: water collectors near San Miguel; libraries and
computer labs for schools; and construction work with El Salvadorian
Students.
Though the structures designed
by REDES are modern block and
reinforced concrete buildings the
only thing not so modern about it
was the way in which they were
built. Excavations, concrete mixing
and pouring, bar bending and soil
compacting were all done by hand.
But this experience isn’t only about
manual labour.
REDES feel that this volunteer
programme is as much about our
experiencing the country and its
culture as about the engineering
side. They organise a punishing
schedule of tourist excursions that
you would never get out of a guide
book, from Mayan ruins to the
beach and also talking to some of
the most interesting people you are
ever likely to meet. With the work
during the week you can sometimes
feel like time off.
It may not be a large country but
you’ll soon realise that six weeks is
not long enough.
For more information about the
projects (past, present and
future), upcoming presentations
or about participating in this
scheme please e-mail:
neal.turkington@imperial.ac.uk

Paul ‘la cabeza’ Wong: fourth year, scared of spiders
and MS 13 (a local gang), built like a Greek god
“It has been over six weeks since
I returned from El Salvador, and
how can anyone forget: making
concrete in blistering heat, being stalked by little monkey kids
during dinner, having your life
flash before your eyes when encountering the local gangsters,
watching a guy taking a dump
in his own backyard (while he
was suppose to be ‘mining’ for
aggregate), fabricating our own
building tools and, of course, our
favourite pastime in El Salvador,
making sweet and sexy concrete.
In one of the most beautiful yet
troubled countries I have ever
encountered, I have had one of
the greatest experiences of my
life. And if anyone were to embark on this trip, they will never
forget this lovely country and the
lovely people that live in it.”

Dan ‘ear licker’ Woodier: currently
spending his fourth year in Paris.
Responsible for inflicting a bunch
of students on a country that has
many worse problems
“I’m currently spending fourth
year in Paris and responsible for
inflicting a bunch of students on
a country with worse things to
worry about. I went to El Salvador in 2003 and had such a good
time I decided to go back. I miss
the banter with the various characters we worked with, my lively
family and kicking back at the
tienda after work with a well deserved pilsener. With this project
you get out what you put in and
more, so would recommend it to
anyone who doesn’t mind a few
spiders in their boots.”

Alice ‘no days off’ Clarke: now in the
second year of Civil Engineering,
suffered from pizza sweat
“It was seeing the report from the
group who went out in 2004 that
made me decide to come to El Salvador. I think I was seduced by the
picturesque sunny beaches and
lush green mountains and the idea
of working on such an exotic construction site; it felt like the furthest
place possible from London. There
was much more to the El Salvador
project than manual labour. We had
dinner in the home of a famous El
Salvadorian artist, attempted to
learn salsa in the clubs of San Salvador. I had such an amazing time I
didn’t really want leave.”

Myrto
‘Mamasita’
Papaspiliou:
now doing a
PhD, formerly
the 2006 Santa
Marta sex
symbol
We returned from El Salvador
about one and a half months ago
and since then a lot of people
have asked me about the trip. I
have not yet been able to find the
words to make others see what a
wonderful time I had as all these
“you should have been there”
stories come to my head. Work
was quite hard under the burning sun, but even that was fun.
I could not actually believe that
making concrete and digging can
be so enjoyable, although then
the weekends came and it was
even greater with a lot of sightseeing, Pilseners and rum!

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

CLUBS & SOCIETIES

29

clubsandsocs.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Outdoor Club
Summer Fun

The Outdoor Club enjoy a brief moment of respite in the fluffy snow
“Come on, get up! Time to go!”
Alex’s 4am wake-up calls filtered
into my barely conscious head.
Sluggish limbs shook off sleep and
attempted to pull on clothes for the
mountain. Conditions were good:
we could set out to conquer our
highest peak yet. Boots were done
up, crampons fastened, backpacks
put on, the rope tied into, and soon
we were off on the 1½ hour walk to
the base of the beast: the Barre des
Ecrins peak.
We trudged single file in the darkness, illuminating sparkling snow
with our head torches, treading
carefully over the crevasses. Arriving at the base of our climb, we
set a steady pace and managed to
overtake many of the other people
on the same route. Our three hour
ascent took us past amazing snow
sculptures (‘meringue’ formations),
a particularly deep crevasse, and
close to the summit, a long row of
huge icicles hanging precariously.
All our efforts were rewarded by the
incredible views at the top: mountains extended in every direction.
We were on the highest point for
miles around - 4,015m to be precise!
In the very distance, mountain ridges looked unreal, with a two-dimensional, cardboard cutout quality. For
most of us, this was the mental and
physical high point of the trip. This
years Outdoor Club summer tour
to the Ecrins National Park in the
southern French Alps was a truly
action packed two weeks, where
activities such as mountaineering,
hiking, rock climbing and mountain
biking were experienced.
A couple of days after our arrival,
we seized a weather window and
eagerly headed up to the glacier. After a couple of hours walk we set up
camp above the Glacier Blanc refuge (2542m) to allow us to acclimatise. The next day started at 6.30am
– for all except Bernard, that is,
who had to be shaken from his bivvy – something that became a fairly
regular occurrence on the trip! We
continued our trek up, arriving at
the base of the glacier Blanc, where
we donned crampons and walked
up the path past huge fissures and
crevasses. By the time we had set
up camp, complete with an expertly
crafted snow wall, it was still early
so we got in some practice by walking up to the col beneath Pic du Glacier Blanc (3,463m).
Our four days spent on the glacier transported us into a different
world. It was a desert of snow and
rock; freezing at night and burning
hot by day - I was naive in thinking
I’d never get a sun tan on a glacier!

There were a few more things to get
used to. Firstly, our strange hours:
up at 4 or 5am, bed at 6pm. Then
there was the mountain food: chocolate for breakfast (sometimes a bit
difficult to stomach!), peanuts and
raisins for lunch and a cooked meal
in the afternoon (a choice between
noodles, couscous or pasta with
tuna or corned beaf) plus powdered
deserts (custard being the favourite). There were also lots of skills to
pick up from the more experienced
members of our group: crevasse
rescue (conducted at base camp,
care of a fairly rotten looking tree!),
ice-axe arrest (acts as a brake if you
fall over), how to walk in crampons,
how to tie into the rope and taking
care to avoid tripping over it.
For the majority of us, it was our
first experience at that altitude.
While no-one suffered severe effects, we all quickly learnt the importance of looking after yourself
in that environment. When you
consider a mountaineer expends
300-800 calories and can lose up to
a litre of water an hour, you need to
eat and drink properly.
The second day on the glacier
was spent climbing up to the col
Emile Pic (3,483m), after which
we did a ridge traverse (over some
very lose rocks!) to Pic de Neige
Cordier (3,614m). Glissading down
from the col was definitely another
highlight. Rain back at camp sent
most of us sheltering in the tents,
but it didn’t stop Bernard, Matt and
Joe exploring some rock routes on
the slabs behind. More rain delayed
our start the following day, but it
cleared up later and we decided
to climb the ridge on the right side
of the col beneath Pic du Glacier
Blanc. This was quite exposed at
points, giving us fantastic aerial
views of the glacier below. Most of
us descended after the first part of
the ridge, but Alex, Ben, Bernard
and James continued up to the top.
We watched from camp as their tiny
silhouettes climbed on pinnacles
along the ridge. Our final day in the
mountains saw us tackle the Barre,
after which, everyone except for
Ben, Alex and Bernard went down
from the glacier. They stayed to
climb another ridge the next day
while the rest of us descended the
2,500m back to base camp for some
rest and relaxation.
continued on page 97
To find out more about how to
get involved with Outdoor Club
contact Daniel Carrivick
carriv98@imperial.ac.uk

W
IN

A
DV POR
D
T
PL AB
AY LE
ER

Shell Careers Presentation
If you are interested in a career at Shell, then come and take a closer look. You will discover
which â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;routeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is best for you and be able to ask our recent graduates and representatives
plenty of questions.
Shell is an Equal Opportunity Employer
www.shell.com/careers

Time and Date:

18:30, 19th October 2006
Location:

Holiday Inn, Kensington Forum,
97 Cromwell Road, London SW7 4DN

Achieving more together

felix

Friday 13 October 2006

PUZZLES

31

sudoku.felix@imperial.ac.uk

Sudoku 1,359

This Week’s Horoscopes

Complete the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3
square contains the digits 1 to 9. E-mail your solution to sudoku.
felix@imperial.ac.uk by Tuesday 9am. We will randomly select
a winner to receive either a 128MB USB stick or a crate of beer.
You must claim your prize within a week.

Scorpio (23 Oct – 21 Nov)

Pisces (19 Feb – 20 Mar)

Cancer (22 Jun – 22 Jul)

You’re compelled
to buy a shiny axe.
However, you can only
offer a week old Mars
Bar to the owner. He
amazingly accepts
only for you to see said mouldy
confectionery on eBay going for
£3,092. You take your own life with
the axe.

A freak lab accident
causes small hairs to
grow on your skin and
you can stick to walls.
Sticky residue also appears on your wrists
even after a week of not doing the
bad thing to your good self. Hook
up with Kirsten Dunst. Make $114
million at your opening weekend.

You realise you joined
every society. You are
£2500 in debt. Congratulations, dumbass. You are a waste of
space. Watch yourself,
keep your back to the wall and
keep one eye open when you sleep.
People with scythes are coming for
your virginal blood.

Sagittarius (22 Nov – 21 Dec)

Aries (21 Mar – 20 Apr)

Leo (23 Jul – 22 Aug)

You join the Armenian
mafia. They want 50
golden statuettes of
Elvis and 19 pints of
blood from an epileptic chimp or they are
taking both your kidneys. You are
caught in London Zoo, needle in
hand, by the rozzers and ironically
are shot in the kidneys.

You finally unpack
your suitcase full
of clothes. Lying at
the bottom is your
Dad’s, russian bride’s,
Mum’s, sister’s,
pimp’s, prostitute’s G-string. You
try it on and discovering that it is
blood soaked. Draping it over your
face, the smell intoxicates you.

You spend £3.12 on
food today in the
canteen. The grains
of rice begin to climb
over the mountainous chicken breast
battleground. Coriander leaves are
flung from one side of the plate to
the other as war breaks out in your
Indian cuisine.

Capricorn (22 Dec – 19 Jan)

Taurus (21 Apr – 21 May)

Virgo (23 Aug – 22 Sept)

This week you infiltrate North Korea.
Having eaten a plate
of the country’s finest
battered schnauzer,
your skin begins to
boil and bubble. A song breaks out
of your crackled lips: “Bow-wowwow yippy yo, yippy yay, where my
dogs at? Bark with me now.”

You become obsessed
with fantasy novels.
and refer to everyday objects such as
scissors as the “The
Might Blade of Twain
of Mount Xarthuria” and a cheese
drater as “The Hallowed Mesh of
Steel Pain”. Wizard Legadyk kills
you with an apple peeler.

You have the feeling that your room
mate watches you
whilst you sleep. You
set up your webcam
to record him in the
night. To your horror you manage
to record 72 hours of badger mating calls. You ask to switch rooms,
immediately.

Your boyfriend begins
to find exotic calligraphy more attractive
than you. You attempt
to win him back by
having your body tattooed with every known font. Now
so excited when he sees you he has
premature ejaculations. You hate
yourself and so does everyone else.

Thanks to everyone that entered.
Marine Pomarede, a winner is you!
Keep those entries coming in!

Felix Crossword 1,359
1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Scarecrow
8

9
10

11

13

12
14
15

19

22

17

16

20

23

18

21

24

25
26

27

29

28

30

Send your answers to sudoku.felix@imperial.ac.uk or bring this
page down to the Felix office in the West Wing of Beit Quad. Each
week, we’ll print the winner’s name, thus providing them with
almost unlimited kudos and self-satisfaction. David Bartram, a
winner is you! Everyone who provides us with a correct solution
will get an entry into our prize draw at the end of the year.

ACROSS

DOWN

1 Setter is is with fifty others in
city of foolishness (10)
6 Strip and follow a follower (4)
10 Fear of god (5)
11 Screwdrivers from Idaho? (9)
12 Adjusting king after work,
during tea (8)
13 Lump of mixed French spice (5)
15 Add to feds between gold and
time (8)
17 Garbled news as a city (7)
19 Motion moved nick of time, oft
removed (7)
21 Water gods look after Docklands
(4,3)
22 Confused, Adrian lost his head
at lowest point (5)
24 see 30
27 Mixture I purport to mix without
heat (9)
28 Provide one hundred at Eritrea
(5)
29 In this, how to display (4)
30 & 24 Score an eighth? (3,7,3,5)

Solving a crossword takes considerably more skill, intellect, time
and, quite frankly, charm than does
solving a sudoku. This much is
self-evident.
However, those with the wherewithall to solve are clearly deserving of a good deal more recognition
than they have received until now,
comparable to the sudoku’s ethos
of a “small prize”.
Something along the lines of a
parade in honour of the successful
solver would be in order, I feel. And
a choice of memory stick or case
of beer too, perhaps. That doesn’t
seem unreasonable to me.
This week’s clues, however, most
certainly are.
Scarecrow
Solution to Crossword 1,358
R
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lubs&Societies
C
Going underground with IC Caving

CROSSWORD
SUDOKU

page 31

Only nine months since I started
caving, here I was: the first person
ever to set foot in this passageway,
200 metres below the surface of an
Austrian mountain.
I was there with members of Imperial College Caving Club, and this
was the final trip of the expedition.
We had passed an obstacle that
stopped us last time, a 9m vertical
drop in the cave floor. My caving
buddy hammered a bolt into the
wall and we tied on a rope so we
could abseil down. Once at the bottom we were in a never-before explored part of the cave, walking into
the unknown.
Clambering over the boulder
strewn ground we noticed the
gaps between the rocks, wedged
together 2m above the ‘real’ floor.
Unsure how stable our footing was
we treaded with caution further
into the cave. We felt the character of the passage change; an eerie draught started sucking along
the passage, our voices starting to
echo off something a very long way
away. As we passed the last corner we suddenly emerged into the
blackness, our lights swallowed up
by the sheer enormity of the chasm
that opened up before us.
We hurled a chunk of rock into
the pit, counting the seconds until
it reached the floor. One… two…
Still nothing. Three… boom, rattle, rattle! Fifty metres deep. This
was a real monster, and would need
more time to conquer than we had.
Longer underground would risk
worrying the rest of the team who
awaited our return, snug in our
mountain-top camp, so we had to
leave. Five hours later the two of
us were standing at the entrance
to the cave, cold and exhausted but
with an immense sense of achievement. We staggered back to our
camp, navigating by cairns that
had been erected over the previous 4 weeks in good time to join our
friends around the campfire, to chat

AdLib

elatedly about our discoveries over
fantastically warming curry before
collapsing into our sleeping bags.
Does the cave continue beyond
that last enormous drop? Nobody
knows. There could be kilometres
more to find, or it could end around
the next corner. It will take another
expedition in another year to find
out – only this time you could be
there as well.
Although caving is certainly challenging, both physically and psychologically, it is neither competitive
nor macho. Caving is the perfect
team sport: since everyone’s safety
depends on the group, there is no
room for showing off. The aim is to
use people’s different skills in cooperation, to further common goals
of exploration and enjoyment. No
prior experience is required: all the
necessary training is done within
the club, drawing on the experience
of our older members. All trips are
tailored to the skills and wishes of
those taking part and you will never
be asked to do things that you are
unhappy with or that we do not feel
you are ready for yet.
ICCC runs regular weekend trips
to caving destinations around the
UK – usually costing £25-30 inclusive of all training, equipment,
transportation,
accommodation,
food and leadership. As well as
our summer expedition (normally
to Slovenia), we have a week-long
tour in Easter to somewhere warm,
and long-weekends to destinations
around Europe in the spring and
summer. We meet weekly on Tuesdays in the Union from 7.30pm to
discuss past events and future excursions over a pint or two. There
will also be additional rope-climbing practice in the trees in Princes
Gardens during this term.
To find out more about how you
can get involved in Caving check
out the website, www.union.
ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/ or e-mail
ICCC President, Sandeep Mavadia
at ic.caving@gmail.com